The evaluation of autothermal methane reforming for hydrogen production over Ni/CeO 2 catalysts Soodeh Sepehri a,b , Mehran Rezaei b,c,** , Yuan Wang d , Aryan Younesi e , Hamidreza Arandiyan f,* a Young Researchers and Elite Club, Kashan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kashan, Iran b Catalyst and Advanced Materials Research Laboratory, Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran c Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran d School of Chemistry, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia e Chemical Engineering Faculty, Tafresh University, Iran f Laboratory of Advanced Catalysis for Sustainability, School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, Sydney 2006, Australia article info Article history: Received 8 August 2018 Received in revised form 30 September 2018 Accepted 2 October 2018 Available online xxx Keywords: Autothermal reforming Methane conversion Synthesis gas production Ni supported catalyst Sintering abstract Nanocrystalline Ni/CeO 2 catalysts with various loadings of Ni (10, 15, 20, and 25%) were synthesised by a facile solvent deficient precipitation method for methane autothermal reforming process. The characterisation techniques such as XRD, BET, TPH, H 2 -TPR were carried out on fresh and spent samples to investigate the catalytic properties of the Ni/ CeO 2 . On the basis of characterisation results, the 20% Ni/CeO 2 performs the best activity among the catalysts with different Ni contents. The optimal reaction conditions for autothermal methane reforming has been investigated by evaluating the effect of reaction parameters including the reactivity temperature, the gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) and H 2 O/CH 4 (S/C) and O 2 /CH 4 (O/C) molar ratios. The stability of 20 wt% Ni/CeO 2 catalyst at 700  C is examined for 20 h on-stream reaction. It reveals that the methane conversion starts a graduate decrease trend from the second 10 h, which is found to be because of the sintering of Ni nanoparticles by TPH and BET analysis. © 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Autothermal methane reforming (ATR) is an important pro- cess to generate synthesis gas (syngas), a combination gas of CO and H 2 , through the combination of adiabatic steam reforming and non-catalytic partial oxidation. Syngas is a valuable chemical raw material for methanol synthesis. Both precious and non-precious metal and metal oxide catalysts have been developed to be efficient catalysts for catalysing ATR reaction. A precious metal catalyst such as Rh supported catalyst has been proved to possess high performance for the * Corresponding author. ** Corresponding author. Catalyst and Advanced Materials Research Laboratory, Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engi- neering, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran. E-mail addresses: Rezaei@kashanu.ac.ir (M. Rezaei), hamid.arandiyan@sydney.edu.au (H. Arandiyan). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (2018) 1 e7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.10.016 0360-3199/© 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Sepehri S, et al., The evaluation of autothermal methane reforming for hydrogen production over Ni/ CeO 2 catalysts, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.10.016