Project Details

This project is using electrochemical concepts to develop a new method to chemically transform alkanes to olefins at low temperature, with high selectivity. Selective catalytic alkane dehydrogenation has a range of potentially valuable applications that would allow exploitation of abundant alkane resources. CENTC researchers have previously used alkane dehydrogenation to selectively produce olefins and aromatics, and several tandem dehydro­genation/functionalization reactions have been investigated. These reactions require sacrificial H2 accep­tors such as tert-butylethylene. The goal of this project is to have an electrode serve as the net hydrogen acceptor.