Influence of H2S and NH3 on biogas dry reforming using Ni catalyst: a study on single and synergetic effect

Biogas is a renewable biomass energy source mainly composed of CH4 and CO2. Dry reforming is a promising technology for the high-value utilization of biogas. Some impurity gases in biogas can not be completely removed after pretreatment, which may affect the performance of dry reforming. In this study, the influence of typical impurities H2S and NH3 on dry reforming was studied using Ni/MgO catalyst. The results showed that low concentration of H2S in biogas could cause serious deactivation of catalyst. Characterization results including EDS, XPS and TOF-SIMS confirmed the adsorption of sulfur on the catalyst surface, which was the cause of catalyst poisoning. We used air calcination method to regenerate the sulfur-poisoned catalysts and found that the regeneration temperature higher than 500 °C could help catalyst recover the original activity. NH3 in the concentration range of 50–10000 ppm showed a slight inhibitory effect on biogas dry reforming. The decline rate of biogas conversion efficiency increased with the increase of NH3 concentration. This was related to the reduction of oxygen activity on catalyst surface caused by NH3. The synergetic effect of H2S and NH3 in biogas was investigated. The results showed that biogas conversion decreased faster under the coexistence of H2S and NH3 than under the effect of H2S alone, so as the surface oxygen activity of catalyst. Air calcination regeneration could also recover the activity of the deactivated catalyst under the synergetic effect of H2S and NH3.