A hydroxyapatite-supported nickel catalyst containing 1 wt% nickel loading is successfully prepared by ion exchange, showing excellent catalytic performance in the trireforming of methane reaction at 800 °C and 1.4 bar.

Catalytic steam reforming of methane is a major process to produce synthetic gas (syngas), deployed at a large industrial scale. However, this is an energy-intensive process since it is carried out at a high temperature above 900 °C with a large excess of water to preserve catalyst stability. Tri-reforming of methane (TRM) is an alternative solution to steam reforming of methane, which allows valorizing not only methane and water but also carbon dioxide and oxygen, which are usually present in feedstocks such as biogas, landfill gas, or flue gas. Developing a highly performing catalyst for TRM under severe reaction conditions, in particular, with the inlet feeding composition close to the chemical stoichiometry, is meaningful to optimize process energy efficiency. In this work, a hydroxyapatite-supported nickel catalyst containing 1 wt% Ni is synthesized by cation exchange and investigated in TRM. High activity and very good stability are obtained, making it among the most-performing catalysts in TRM, in comparison with the data from the literature.