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Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics develops copper single-atom catalyst to achieve low-temperature propane dehydrogenation reaction release date: 2025-03-31 Recently, academician Zhang Tao, researcher Wang Aiqin, researcher Liu Xiaoyan, associate researcher Yang Bing, etc. from the Catalysis and New Materials Research Center (1500 Group) of our institute collaborated with the team of researcher Gao Yi from the Shanghai Institutes for Advanced Studies, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to make new progress in single-atom photothermal synergistic catalytic propane dehydrogenation reaction. Propane dehydrogenation (PDH) is an important industrial process for producing propylene. Since this reaction is a strongly endothermic process, traditional thermal catalysis needs to be carried out at high temperatures of 500 °C to 800 °C, which consumes high energy and can easily lead to catalyst deactivation. Although the reaction temperature can be reduced by introducing oxygen oxidative dehydrogenation (ODHP), there is also the problem of excessive oxidation of propylene. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop propane dehydrogenation reaction under mild conditions. The 1500 group has long been committed to research on heterogeneous catalysis, environmental catalysis and biomass conversion, and has achieved a series of results in the field of single-atom catalysis. In recent years, the team has been working on photothermal synergistic catalytic propane oxidation (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2020) and glycerol conversion (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2024) and other fields have also made series of progress. In this work, based on Cu1/TiO2 single-atom catalyst, the team achieved propane dehydrogenation reaction in water gas through photothermal synergistic catalysis under near-ambient conditions. The reaction temperature was reduced to 50 °C to 80 °C in a continuous flow fixed-bed reactor, and the reaction rate was up to 1201 μmol·gcat-1·h-1. Comparative experimental results show that Cu single atoms, water vapor and photothermal synergy all make irreplaceable contributions to the reaction. Isotope tracing experiments, in-situ EPR, CO-DRIFTS and DFT calculation results show that this reaction produces hydrogen and hydroxyl groups by photolyzing water on a Cu1/TiO2 single-atom catalyst. The hydroxyl groups can be adsorbed on the surface of the catalyst and extract hydrogen atoms from propane to produce propylene and water. ； Water participates in the reaction but is not lost, functioning as a catalyst ； Cu single atoms promote the separation of photogenerated electrons and holes during the reaction, and play a key role in the CH bond activation of propane and propylene desorption. This reaction mechanism is different from traditional propane direct dehydrogenation and oxidative dehydrogenation, and circumvents the limitations of high-temperature reactions. In addition, the team also found that sunlight can directly drive the propane dehydrogenation reaction on the Cu1/TiO2 single-atom catalyst. This work provides a new reaction pathway for the propane dehydrogenation reaction and also provides an example for using solar energy to promote strong endothermic reactions under mild conditions. The relevant research results were published in Nature Chemistry under the title "Light-driven propane dehydrogenation by a single-atom catalyst under near-ambient conditions". The co-first authors of this work are associate researcher Kang Leilei of the 1502 Group of our institute and researcher Zhu Bein of the Shanghai Institutes for Advanced Study, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The above worked and got * * Key R&D plans, * * Natural Science Foundation, * * Funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China's "Single Atom Catalysis" Basic Science Center Project and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Category B Pilot Project "Research on the In-Situ Dynamic Molecular Transformation Mechanism of Enzyme Catalysis Based on Hyperpolarized NMR".