Understanding the microscopic mechanisms governing methane–iron oxide interactions is essential for advancing low-carbon metallurgical and catalytic processes. However, the atomic-scale pathways of methane activation, lattice oxygen removal, and interfacial carbon accumulation during CH4–FeO gas–solid reactions remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we employ large-scale reactive molecular dynamics simulations based on the ReaxFF framework to explore the high-temperature CH4–FeO interaction, with a particular focus on the coupling among atomic diffusion, charge transfer, and interfacial reaction dynamics.
The simulations reveal that methane-induced reduction initiates at the gas–solid interface and propagates inward through progressive lattice oxygen depletion, consistent with the moving reaction-front assumption of the unreacted-core model. CH4 molecules undergo catalytic dissociation on the FeO surface, generating reactive intermediates such as H* and CH3− that actively participate in surface reduction reactions. Charge distribution and self-diffusion analyses demonstrate that hydrogen exhibits high interfacial mobility and efficiently promotes oxygen removal from the FeO lattice, whereas carbon remains largely confined near the interface, leading to localized carbon accumulation.
Within the ultrathin metallic Fe layers formed during the simulations (on the order of ∼10 Å), oxygen-containing species exhibit an apparent multi-regime migration behavior. This behavior reflects atomic-scale transport under defect-free conditions and should be interpreted as a microscopic feature of the simulated system. In practical reduction processes involving thicker metallic layers, oxygen transport is expected to be dominated by macroscopic defects such as pores and cracks rather than bulk diffusion through metallic iron. Although the accessible simulation timescale limits the direct observation of long-term product evolution, the present results capture the essential atomic-scale characteristics of the CH4–FeO reduction pathway and provide mechanistic insight into interface-controlled reduction and carbon deposition phenomena observed experimentally. Future work will extend the simulations to longer timescales and more realistic reaction environments, including multi-component gas mixtures (CH4–CO–H2–H2O) and coupled temperature–pressure conditions, while integrating molecular dynamics with controlled experiments to further validate and refine the proposed mechanisms.
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