Engineering Ni/SiO2 catalysts for enhanced CO2 methanation

• A sol-gel method was developed to load Ni-MOF to silica. • The sol-gel method was optimized to reduce the preparation cost. • A highly dispersed Ni/SiO 2 catalyst without using MOF was designed. • The Ni/SiO 2 catalysts exhibited high catalytic property for CO 2 methanation. The CO 2 methanation is an important process in coal-to-gas, power-to-gas and CO 2 removal for spacecraft. Recently, metal-organic framework (MOF) derivatives have been demonstrated as high-performance catalysts for CO 2 upgrading processes. However, due to the high costs and low stability of MOF derivatives, it still remains challenge for the development of alternative synthesis methods avoiding MOF precursors. In this work, we present the sol-gel method for loading Ni-MOF to silica support in two-steps. Upon modifying the procedure, a more simplified one-step sol-gel method has been developed. Furthermore, the obtained Ni/SiO 2 catalyst still exhibits great catalytic performance with a CO 2 conversion of 77.2% and considerable CH 4 selectivity of ~100% during a stability test for 52 h under a low temperature of 310 °C and high GHSV of 20,000 mL·g −1 ·h −1 . Therefore, this work provides a ground-breaking direct strategy for loading MOF derived catalysts, and might shed a light on the preparation of highly dispersed Ni/SiO 2 catalyst.