Effect of additives on nickel/calcined dolomite catalyst performance for corn stalk gasification hydrogen production

The catalytic gasification of corn stalk was conducted using calcined dolomite (CD) as the support and nickel (Ni) as the active component. Characterization techniques were employed to assess the impact of Y₂O₃, La₂O₃ and ZrO₂ additives on the gasification performance and anti-carbon accumulation of Ni/CD catalysts. The addition of the aforementioned additives was observed to enhance the metal-support interaction and reduce the size of the Ni particles. Concurrently, the catalyst basicity increased, resulting in a substantial number of surface oxygen vacancies. The La–Ni/CD catalyst exhibited the highest surface alkalinity of 1.94 mmol g⁻¹. After seven cycles, the hydrogen yield of the La–Ni/CD catalyst only decreased from 166.7 ml/g of feedstock to 138 ml/g of feedstock. The hydrogen volume fraction was stable at around 40.0 vol % and the carbon conversion remained above 80%, which was higher than the stability of the Ni/CD catalyst. In addition, the La–Ni/CD catalyst was the most resistant to carbon deposition, and the weight loss due to carbon deposition and combustion was only 8.23%. Therefore, it can be concluded that the La–Ni/CD catalysts showed excellent performance in terms of catalytic activity, stability and resistance to carbon deposition.