Steam reforming of methane is an extremely important process for the hydrogen and syngas production. Nickel‐based catalysts have been extensively employed in the industrial process of steam reforming because of their high activity, low cost, and the plentiful supply of Nickel. Nickel‐based catalysts have also shown high activity for CO2 reforming of methane, which has been considered as a good option, with consumption of a significant amount of carbon dioxide. However, a major challenge is that Ni catalysts have a high thermodynamic potential for coke formation during reforming reactions. For steam reforming, coke formation induces deactivation of the catalyst, especially if the carbon forms as carbon filaments. The filamentous carbon material has a high mechanical strength and can cause mechanical deformation of the catalyst. For CO2 reforming, coke formation over Ni catalyst is even more serious and leads to rapid deactivation of the catalyst. It is highly desired to design and synthesize a coke resistant Ni catalyst not only for reforming of methane, but also for reforming of other hydrocarbons (including biomass derived hydrocarbons). Herein we summarize the very recent progresses in the design, synthesis, and characterization of coke resistant Ni catalysts for steam and CO2 reforming of methane. The progresses in the use of promoters, in the effect of supporting materials and in the preparation methods have been discussed. The thermal stability, regeneration, and future development of coke resistant Ni catalysts for these processes are also briefly addressed.

Indium-oxide (InO) nanobelts coated by a 5-nm-thick carbon layer provide an enhanced photocatalytic reduction of CO to CO and CH, yielding CO and CH evolution rates of 126.6 and 27.9 μmol h, respectively, with water as reductant and Pt as co-catalyst. The carbon coat promotes the absorption of visible light, improves the separation of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, increases the chemisorption of CO, makes more protons from water splitting participate in CO reduction, and thereby facilitates the photocatalytic reduction of CO to CO and CH.

The chemisorption of specific optically active compounds on metal surfaces can create catalytically active chirality transfer sites. However, the mechanism through which these sites bias the stereoselectivity of reactions (typically hydrogenations) is generally assumed to be so complex that continued progress in the area is uncertain. We show that the investigation of heterogeneous asymmetric induction with single-site resolution sufficient to distinguish stereochemical conformations at the submolecular level is finally accessible. A combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory calculations reveals the stereodirecting forces governing preorganization into precise chiral modifier-substrate bimolecular surface complexes. The study shows that the chiral modifier induces prochiral switching on the surface and that different prochiral ratios prevail at different submolecular binding sites on the modifier at the reaction temperature.

No abstract