Liu Hongyang, Li Bo and Wang Xiaohui, associate researchers of Institute of metals, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have made new progress in the research of catalysts for alkane dehydrogenation

As an important organic monomer raw material, olefin is closely related to human daily production and life For example, ethylene, propylene and styrene are widely used in the synthesis of various engineering plastics, rubbers and resins In industry, styrene is mainly produced by dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene with potassium promoted iron oxide under the protection of excessive superheated steam This traditional production method needs to consume a lot of energy and water resources, which is not conducive to the development of green economy Therefore, the research and development of new catalytic materials and reduction of reaction energy consumption have been the focus of industrial dehydrogenation Mxene, as a new two-dimensional transition metal carbide crystal, has a structure similar to that of graphene It can be obtained by etching the max phase of layered ceramics with hydrofluoric acid It has excellent mechanical, electronic and magnetic properties It is mainly used in the fields of electrochemical energy storage, composite reinforcement, lubrication, electromagnetic shielding and so on Recently, the research team of low carbon alkane activation composed of Liu Hongyang, associate researcher of Catalytic Materials Research Department of Metal Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr Diao Jiangyong, etc., cooperated with Li Bo, associate researcher and Wang Xiaohui, and used ti 3c2tx mxene material in the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene It was found that the dehydrogenation activity of ethylbenzene of mxene material with unit specific surface area reached At 92 μ mol · m - 2 · H - 1, the selectivity of styrene reached 97.5%, which was much higher than the known high activity non-metal dehydrogenation catalyst, and showed excellent high temperature stability Through a variety of characterization methods and the first principle calculation, the team found that the c-ti-o functional group produced in the etching process was used as the dehydrogenation active site to successively remove the two hydrogen atoms on the ethyl in the ethylbenzene molecule to obtain styrene At the same time, the layered structure of mxene material is also conducive to the heat and mass transfer in the reaction process, so that the catalyst has high specific activity and stability This work is the first time that mxene material is used as catalyst for the dehydrogenation of alkanes, and the active sites and reaction paths of the catalyst for the dehydrogenation of alkanes have been successfully revealed, thus providing a new choice for the development of industrial catalysts for the dehydrogenation of alkanes The results were recently published on ACS Catalysis (DOI: 10.1021 / acscalal 8b02002) This work has been supported by the youth fund of the National Fund Committee, the general program of the National Fund Committee, the cultivation program of the major research plan of the National Fund Committee on carbon based energy transformation, the young scientists program of the key R & D plan of the Ministry of science and technology, the youth Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the metal Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Sinopec enterprise project.