Issue 16/2018 - A major breakthrough in methane room temperature conversion research

Recently, ShanghaiTech University announced that Zuo Zhiwei's research team has successfully developed a co-catalytic system of cheap and efficient cerium-based catalyst and alcohol catalyst, which solves the scientific problem of using light energy to convert methane into liquid products at room temperature, and opens up a new way
for methane resource and high-value utilization.
This major scientific research achievement was published online in the top international academic journal Science
.

In order to achieve highly selective methane conversion, today's highly efficient catalysts generally require the use of rare and expensive precious metals (platinum, palladium, etc.
) and high temperatures are essential, neither of which meet the requirements
of the chemical industry for scale and economy.
After years of exploration, the team found that under the synergistic effect of trichloroethanol, the cheap rare earth metal cerium can exert a methane catalytic effect
comparable to that of rare precious metals.
Using a commercial LED light source as a source of reaction energy, they successfully converted
highly selective methane to high value-added products at room temperature.
The characteristics of this catalytic system are that it breaks through the paradigm of carbon-hydrogen bond insertion relying on precious metals in homogeneous catalysis to achieve methane activation, efficiently uses cerium catalysts to convert light energy into chemical energy, adopts hydrogen transfer mode to directly activate methane into highly reactive methyl radicals, and combines free radical coupling strategies, thus providing a new platform
for mild and diverse conversion of methane activation.