Electrosynthesis of polymer-grade ethylene via acetylene semihydrogenation over undercoordinated Cu nanodots

Weiqing Xue, Xinyan Liu, Chunxiao Liu, Xinyan Zhang, Jiawei Li, Zhengwu Yang, Peixin Cui, Hong-Jie Peng, Qiu Jiang, Hongliang Li, Pengping Xu, Tingting Zheng (), Chuan Xia () and Jie Zeng ()
Additional contact information
Weiqing Xue: University of Science and Technology of China
Xinyan Liu: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chunxiao Liu: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Xinyan Zhang: University of Science and Technology of China
Jiawei Li: University of Science and Technology of China
Zhengwu Yang: University of Science and Technology of China
Peixin Cui: Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Hong-Jie Peng: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Qiu Jiang: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Hongliang Li: University of Science and Technology of China
Pengping Xu: University of Science and Technology of China
Tingting Zheng: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chuan Xia: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Jie Zeng: University of Science and Technology of China

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract The removal of acetylene impurities remains important yet challenging to the ethylene downstream industry. Current thermocatalytic semihydrogenation processes require high temperature and excess hydrogen to guarantee complete acetylene conversion. For this reason, renewable electricity-based electrocatalytic semihydrogenation of acetylene over Cu-based catalysts is an attractive route compared to the energy-intensive thermocatalytic processes. However, active Cu electrocatalysts still face competition from side reactions and often require high overpotentials. Here, we present an undercoordinated Cu nanodots catalyst with an onset potential of −0.15 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode that can exclusively convert C2H2 to C2H4 with a maximum Faradaic efficiency of ~95.9% and high intrinsic activity in excess of −450 mA cm−2 under pure C2H2 flow. Subsequently, we successfully demonstrate simulated crude ethylene purification, continuously producing polymer-grade C2H4 with

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37821-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-37821-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37821-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().