posted on 2020-02-27, 22:48authored byXirui Zhang, Lingting Ye, Hao Li, Fanglin Chen, Kui Xie
The
conversion of ethane, a main component of natural gas, to ethylene
feed stock has attracted widespread attention since the worldwide
shale gas revolution. Thermal catalysis of ethane to ethylene, mainly
oxidative dehydrogenation, faces the fundamental challenge of low
conversion, low selectivity, and catalyst coking. This work demonstrates
an efficient conversion of ethane to ethylene in a nonoxidative dehydrogenation
process in a proton-conducting solid oxide electrolyzer at ambient
pressure and 700 °C. We show the highest ethane conversion of
75.2% and ∼100% ethylene selectivity even only at 0.8 V in
this electrochemical catalysis process. The electrochemical pumping
of protons at anode with active exsolved metal–oxide interfaces
enhances anode activity, while the metal–oxide interface interactions
further engineer the ethane conversion in the electrochemical dehydrogenation
process. We exsolve metal–oxide interface architecture at nanoscale
on the electrode scaffold to improve coking resistance and catalyst
stability. We further present the reduction of carbon dioxide to carbon
monoxide in the cathode combined with ethane conversion in the anode,
and we show the higher performance of ethane conversion in the anode
with syngas production in the cathode. The electrochemical dehydrogenation
process would provide an alternative method for the petrochemical
production and a thermochemical practice in a clean energy mode.