Overview performance of lanthanide oxide catalysts in methanation reaction for natural gas production

A rapid growth in the development of power generation and transportation sectors would result in an increase in the carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration in the atmosphere. As it will continue to play a vital role in meeting current and future needs, significant efforts have been made to address this problem. Over the past few years, extensive studies on the development of heterogeneous catalysts for CO₂ methanation have been investigated and reported in the literatures. In this paper, a comprehensive overview of methanation research studies over lanthanide oxide catalysts has been reviewed. The utilisation of lanthanide oxides as CO₂ methanation catalysts performed an outstanding result of CO₂ conversion and improvised the conversion of acidity from CO₂ gas to CH₄ gas. The innovations of catalysts towards the reaction were discussed in details including the influence of preparation methods, the structure-activity relationships as well as the mechanism with the purpose of outlining the pathways for future development of the methanation process.