Natural kaolin-based Ni catalysts have been developed for low-temperature CO₂ methanation. The catalysts were prepared via a one-step co-impregnation of Ni and Ce onto a natural kaolin-derived metakaolin using a microwave-assisted hydrothermal method as an acid-/base-free synthesis method. The influences of microwave irradiation and Ce promotion on the catalytic enhancement including the CO₂ conversion, CH₄ selectivity, and CH₄ yield were experimentally investigated by a catalytic test of as-prepared catalysts in a fixed-bed tubular reactor. The relationship between the catalyst properties and its methanation activities was revealed by various characterization techniques including X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller, scanning electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, elemental mapping, H₂ temperature-programmed reduction, and X-ray absorption near-edge structure analyses. Among the two enhancement methods, microwave and Ce promotion, the microwave-assisted synthesis could produce a catalyst containing highly dispersed Ni particles with a smaller Ni crystallite size and higher catalyst reducibility, resulting in a higher CO₂ conversion from 1.6 to 7.5% and a better CH₄ selectivity from 76.3 to 79.9% at 300 °C. Meanwhile, the enhancement by Ce addition exhibited a great improvement on the catalyst activities. It was experimentally found that the CO₂ conversion increased approximately 7-fold from 7.5 to 52.9%, while the CH₄ selectivity significantly improved from 79.9 to 98.0% at 300 °C. Though the microwave-assisted synthesis could further improve the catalyst activities of Ce-promoted catalysts, the Ce addition exhibited a more prominent impact than the microwave enhancement. Cerium oxide (CeO₂) improved the catalyst activities through mechanisms of higher CO₂ adsorption capacity with its basic sites and the unique structure of CeO₂ with a reversible valence change of Ce⁴⁺ and Ce³⁺ and high oxygen vacancies. However, it was found that the catalyst prepared by microwave-assisted synthesis and Ce promotion proved to be the optimum catalyst in this study. Therefore, the present work demonstrated the potential to synthesize a nickel-based catalyst with improved catalytic activities by adding a small amount of Ce as a catalytic promoter and employing microwave irradiation for improving the Ni dispersion.

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