New Opportunity for Carbon‐Supported Ni‐based Electrocatalysts: Gas‐Phase CO2 Methanation

Abstract The cost‐effectiveness and excellent performance of conductive‐carbon‐supported Ni‐based electrocatalysts make them attractive materials for hydrogen oxidation and evolution reactions. However, they were previously unused in gas‐phase hydrogenation reactions. In this work, we have expanded the applicability of commercially available advanced Ni/C, NiMo/C and NiRe/C materials from electrocatalysis to heterogeneous catalysis of CO 2 methanation. Our catalytic testing efforts indicate that the monometallic Ni/C material demonstrates the best CO 2 methanation properties, achieving an excellent CO 2 conversion of 83 % at 400 °C with nearly complete selectivity to CH 4 of 99.7 %, plus exhibiting intact performance during 90 h of time‐on‐stream testing. Such catalytic properties are among the highest reported to date among carbon‐supported Ni‐based methanation catalysts. Excellent performance of Ni/C stems from the good dispersion of the Ni nanoparticles over N‐containing carbon support material.