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Selective production of ethylene glycol at high rate via cascade catalysis

Nature Catalysis volume 6, pages 585–595 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ethylene glycol is currently produced via an energy-intensive two-step thermocatalytic process that results in substantial CO2 emissions. Sustainable ethylene glycol production via ethylene electro-oxidation powered by renewable electricity is desirable; however, direct ethylene electro-oxidation suffers from unsatisfactory product selectivity, particularly at high production rates. Here we report a cascade strategy for efficient and selective production of pure ethylene glycol solution under ambient conditions with no detectable by-product formation. Specifically, ethylene is converted to ethylene glycol on a catalyst/solid-acid composite using electrochemically generated hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant. Using an integrated solid-electrolyte reactor, we achieved high electron utilization efficiency of 60–70% at industrially relevant current densities (100–500 mA cm−2) for ethylene glycol production with full product selectivity (~100%). We further integrated this system with a CO2 electroreduction reactor and demonstrated the sustainable production of pure ethylene glycol using CO2 and water as the only feedstocks.

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Fig. 1: Schematic comparisons of ethylene glycol production pathways.
Fig. 2: Ethylene glycol production via cascade catalysis.
Fig. 3: Mechanistic studies of the cascade catalytic system.
Fig. 4: Cascade production of pure ethylene glycol solution.
Fig. 5: Catalyst and system optimization towards more practical applications.
Fig. 6: Cascade ethylene glycol production from CO2.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the supplementary source data, and can also be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the National University of Singapore, Ministry of Education for its financial support, through grants A-0009176-02-00 and A-0009176-03-00. L.W. acknowledges support by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore, under its NRF Fellowship (NRF-NRFF13-2021-0007), and the A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) under its LCERFI programme award number U2102d2002. We thank A. Wong and H. Yukun for the help with the gas chromatography measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Lei Fan, Yilin Zhao, Lei Chen, Jiayi Chen, Junmei Chen, Haozhou Yang, Tianyu Zhang, Jingyi Chen & Lei Wang

  2. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Yukun Xiao

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  1. Lei Fan
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Contributions

L.W. supervised the project. L.W. and L.F. conceived the project. L.F. and L.W. designed the experiments. L.F. carried out the catalyst performance evaluation and the physical characterizations with the help of L.C., Junmei Chen, H.Y., Y.X., T.Z., Jingyi Chen and Jiayi Chen. Jiayi Chen drew the schematic illustration in Fig. 1. Y.Z. performed the technoeconomic analysis. L.F. and L.W. analysed the data and prepared the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and assisted during the manuscript preparation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lei Wang.

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Nature Catalysis thanks Mahinder Ramdin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–45, Notes 1–6, Tables 1 and 2, and references 1–35.

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Fan, L., Zhao, Y., Chen, L. et al. Selective production of ethylene glycol at high rate via cascade catalysis. Nat Catal 6, 585–595 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-023-00977-6

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