Boron-doped nanocarbon catalysts for oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene

Abstract

Nanocarbon materials had been explored as catalysts for oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of alkanes. However, nanocarbon materials exhibit inferior catalytic performance for converting ethane to ethylene through oxidative dehydrogenation (ODE) reaction due to their deactivation under oxidizing and relatively high reaction temperature. In this work, a series of nanocarbon (CN) catalysts were prepared using ZIF-8, a typical metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) material, as precursor. The robust structure of ZIF-8 was retained in CN catalysts, leading to their excellent thermal and reaction stability. Doping boron atoms into the framework of CN catalysts by hydrothermal method further improved their catalytic performance. The best catalyst (o-BCN-1100) synthesized by doping boron atoms followed by oxidation was demonstrated to have an excellent reaction stability and gives 13.5% ethylene yield. After analyzing the results of microkinetic experiments, possible reaction pathways are proposed for CN catalysts in ODE reaction.