A new method to dehydrogenate alkanes at ambient conditions

Ingrid Fadelli is a writer for the website Phys.org.

The organic compounds that are referred to as alkanes, or paraffins, consist of single-bonded carbon and hydrogen atoms, such as methane, ethane, and propane. Alkanes have been used in organic chemistry for a long time due to their unique chemical properties.

A process known as "non-oxidative dehydrogenation" has been used by chemists to break down alkanes. It would provide a low-cost method of creating clean fuel for new hydrogen-based energy solutions.

The C-H bonds in alkanes can only be broken down under certain conditions. This makes it hard for the large-scale adoption of this approach to happen.

Jilin University in China has introduced a possible strategy to achieve the non-oxidative dehydrogenation of alkanes. Their proposed method involves the use of titanium dioxide (Pt/ black TiO 2 ) photocatalysts, in which Platinum atoms are close but not fully bonding.

Lu Li said that the initial goal of the study was to replace the commercial TiO 2 used in his previous work with black TiO 2. We used solar light to drive the non-oxidative dehydrogenation of alkanes. The introduction of clean photon energy can overcome the limitations of the system.

The approach by Li and his colleagues was able to dehydrogenate different alkanes at room temperature and in visible to near-infrared light. The photocatalysts enabled the production of H 2 with a turnover of 100,000 and the reaction to continue for 80 reaction cycles. The result achieved by thermal reactions is not as good as this one.

The researchers were able to achieve a conversion rate of 8.2% for methane. Li and his colleagues achieved a fast dehydrogenation for C2 alkanes.

The brand-new'single-atom collection' catalysts can combine the advantages of single-atom catalysts andnano-catalysts. The new class of catalysts may have applications.

In the future, the photocatalysts used by this team of researchers could prove to be very useful for enabling the production of hydrogen fuel from alkanes, without the need for high temperatures, UV-light, and oxidants. The lower the cost of hydrogen fuel production, the more likely it is that it will be used for energy applications.

We are looking for photocatalysts based on cheap metals. The substrates will be extended to non-toxic saturated hydrocarbons.

More information: Lili Zhang et al, Visible-light-driven non-oxidative dehydrogenation of alkanes at ambient conditions, Nature Energy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01127-1

The Simple and Efficient System for Combined Solar Energy Harvesting and Reversible Hydrogen Storage was written by Lu Li. There is a book titled "jacs.5b03505."

There is a science network.