Catal. Sustain. Energy 2017; 4: 73–82 Keywords: water-gas shift reaction, Pr-doped ceria- zirconia oxide, nickel 1 Introduction In recent years, great attention has been paid in the literature to different variants of pure energy sources [1]. Among them, the most promising is hydrogen, which has some advantages over conventional sources of energy. The conversion of vehicles and industry to hydrogen combustion would protect the air from contamination with carbon, nitrogen and sulfur oxides. Hydrogen is among the most efficient energy carriers, its highest productivity being attained in fuel cells with the efficiency of 60-80%. At the same time, hydrogen serves as a feedstock for some important industrial processes in chemistry, petrochemistry, and metallurgy. An ever- growing consumption of hydrogen is expected in the future. Currently, the most cost effective way to produce hydrogen is the steam reforming of hydrocarbons or biofuels [1-4]. To increase the hydrogen content, the second stage of the process – the water-gas shift (WGS) reaction – is used, which occurs in a broad temperature range and is slightly exothermic. For the intermediate temperature range, catalysts containing oxides of iron and chromium are often used, while catalysts containing oxides of copper, zinc, aluminum, and chromium are usually applied in the low-temperature range [5]. In recent years, catalysts based on metal-loaded ceria and ceria-zirconia oxides are considered to be the most promising for these reactions due to their performance stability and resistance to coking and sulfur poisoning [4-14]. Among different supported metals Ni is apparently the most promising due to its availability, high activity, and low cost. The drawback of nickel catalysts is their rapid deactivation due to sintering and coking on traditional supports such as alumina [15]. https://doi.org/10.1515/cse-2017-0012 Received December 13, 2017; accepted December 15, 2017 Abstract: Mixed nanocrystalline ceria-zirconia oxides doped with praseodymium containing 5, 7.5, 10, and 12.5 wt. % nickel were prepared by the incipient wetness impregnation of the oxide support. Complex physicochemical characterization by X-ray diffraction analysis, ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy of adsorbed CO revealed that the nickel- containing samples are comprised of a solid solution of praseodymium, cerium and zirconium oxides with the fluorite structure as well as nickel oxide particles with a size up to 100 nm. All prepared nanocomposite catalysts show a high catalytic activity in the water-gas shift reaction. The optimum content of nickel in the catalyst providing the maximum activity was found to be 10 wt. %. A high oxygen mobility in these catalysts estimated by the temperature-programmed oxygen isotope heteroexchange with C 18 O 2 provides required coking stability. To eliminate local overheating of the catalyst and decrease the pressure drop in the reactor, as required for further up-scaling, the active component was supported on a metal plate made of Ni-Al foam alloy. At a fixed contact time, the same level of CO conversion with a fraction of the active component was achieved with an approximately 50 wt% loading on the support. Research Article Tatyana V. Larina, Yulia E. Fedorova, Tamara A. Krieger, Arcady V. Ishchenko, Tatiana S. Glazneva, Ekaterina M. Sadovskaya, Nikita F. Eremeev*, Vladislav A. Sadykov Synthesis, physicochemical and catalytic properties of Ni/PrCeZrO catalysts for water-gas shift reaction *Corresponding author: Nikita F. Eremeev, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva, 5, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia, E-mail: yeremeev21@gmail.com Tatyana V. Larina, Yulia E. Fedorova, Tamara A. Krieger, Arcady V. Ishchenko, Tatiana S. Glazneva, Ekaterina M. Sadovskaya, Vladislav A. Sadykov, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Pr. Akademika Lavrenti- eva, 5, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia Arcady V. Ishchenko, Tatiana S. Glazneva, Ekaterina M. Sadovskaya, Vladislav A. Sadykov, Novosibirsk State University, Pirogova str., 2, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia Open Access. © 2017 Tatyana V. Larina et al., published by De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.