The methanation reactions of COx were first discovered by Sabatier and Senderens in 1920.
COx methanation have many practical application as a means of CO removal from process gases for gas separation purposes and is also being discussed as an alternative to PROX in fuel processors for mobile fuel cell applications
In recent years, due to the rise of the natural gas price, the synthetic natural gas production through methanation would constitute an economical asset to reduce gas import dependeance. Meanwhile, the actively investigated hydrogen production by photocatalytic or electrocatalytic water splitting powered by renewable energies (solar or wind) is regarded as future sources of hydrogen for carbon dioxide hydrogenation.
Chemical reactions
The following reactions describe the methanation of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide respectively:
The methanation reactions are classified as exothermic. Hence, according with Le Chatelier's principle, to promote methane production, methanation reactions should be performed at low temperature and high pressure.
Methanation reaction over different carried metal catalysts including Ni, Ru and Rh has been widely investigated for the production of CH4 from syngas.