New Paper in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.

A new paper by Xiyi et al. just published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.: Platinum and CuOx-Decorated TiO2 Photocatalyst for Oxidative Coupling of Methane to C2 Hydrocarbons in a Flow Reactor.

Oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) has been considered as one of the most promising and attractive catalytic technology to upgrade methane. However, C2 products (C2H6/C2H4) from conventional methane conversion have not yielded commercially due to the competition from overoxidation and carbon accumulation at high temperatures. Herein, we reported the co-deposition of Pt nanoparticles and CuOx clusters on TiO2 (PC-50), and then used the photocatalyst to demonstrate the first successful case of photocatalytic OCM in a flow reactor operated at room temperature and under atmospheric pressure. The optimized Cu0.1Pt0.5/PC-50 sample showed a highest yield of C2 product of 6.8 μmol h-1, at the space velocity of 2400 h-1, two times higher than the sum of the activity of Pt/PC-50 (1.07 μmol h-1) and Cu/PC-50 (1.9 μmol h-1), and it might also be the highest among photocatalytic methane conversions reported so far under atmospheric pressure. A high selectivity of 60% to C2 was also comparable to the benchmark work of conventional high temperature (>943K) thermal catalysis. It is proposed that Pt functioned as an electron acceptor facilitating charge separation, while holes could transfer to CuOx avoiding deep dehydrogenation and overoxidation of C2 products. This work provides a new revenue for photocatalytic methane upgrade.