Recently, Prof. Zeng Jie's research group from Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), collaborating with Prof. Xia Chuan and Researcher Zheng Tingting's team from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, developed an undercoordinated Cu nanodots catalyst to achieve acetylene semihydrogenation with high intrinsic activity and efficiency. The research was published in Nature Communications.
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Electrocatalytic acetylene semihydrogenation performance over Cu-based electrocatalysts. Credit: Xue Weiqing et al. Ethylene is a prominent material in chemical industry. Normally, the industrial production process of ethylene (C 2 H 4 ) unavoidably produces 0.5%-3% acetylene (C 2 H 2 ) byproduct that irreversibly poisons the Ziegler-Natta catalysts, resulting in a decline in activity. Therefore, it is important to remove the C 2 H 2 impurities in ethylene production. The traditional thermocatalytic semihydrogenation of C 2 H 2 requires high temperature, high pressure and expensive palladium-based catalyst, which limit its further development. The decreasing cost of electricity has motivated the development of electrocatalytic acetylene semihydrogenation…