Recently, Prof. Dehui Deng and Prof. Liang Yu from Group 509 in the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis (SKLC) at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), in collaboration with Prof. Rui Huang from Dalian University of Technology (DUT), achieved a groundbreaking advancement in the thermocatalytic hydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene. They reported a Pd/WS2 catalyst that enables a highly efficient acetylene hydrogenation process under ambient conditions.
Ethylene is an important basic raw material in the chemical industry, mainly produced through the naphtha cracking process. Due to the severe consumption of oil resources, acetylene hydrogenation to ethylene (AHE) in combination with acetylene production from coal plasma pyrolysis is considered a promising alternative to the traditional petroleum-based ethylene production route. However, it often suffers from high temperature, high energy consumption, and low stability, which severely restricts its industrial application. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop catalysts for efficient acetylene conversion at low temperatures or even at room temperature.
Ambient-condition acetylene hydrogenation to ethylene over a Pd/WS2 catalyst (Image by W. Zhang)
Based on their previous studies on the catalytic hydrogenation of small molecules to high-valued chemicals (Nat. Catal.，2023；Nat. Commun., 2023；Nat. Catal., 2021；Nat. Commun., 2021), Prof. Deng’s research team reported an ambient-condition acetylene hydrogenation process over a Pd/WS2 catalyst. It exhibits over 99% acetylene conversion with a high ethylene selectivity of 70% at 25 oC, and a record space-time yield of ethylene of 1123 molC2H4 molPd-1 h-1 under ambient conditions, which is nearly four times higher than that of the typical Pd1Ag3/Al2O3 catalyst and exhibits superior stability for over 500 hours.
Mechanistic studies reveal that the confinement of Pd-S coordination induces positively charged atomic Pdδ+, which not only facilitates C2H2 hydrogenation but also promotes C2H4 desorption, thereby enabling a high conversion of C2H2 to C2H4 at room temperature while suppressing over-hydrogenation to C2H6. This work opens up the possibility for low-temperature ethylene production via non-oil routes.
The study has been published as a research article in Nature Communications. It was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. (Text by Wangwang Zhang, Kelechi Uwakwe, and Rui Huang)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53481-1
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53481-1
http://www.dicp.ac.cn/xwdt/kyjz/202411/t20241108_7436297.html
