Functional Aqueous Zinc–Acetylene Batteries for Electricity Generation and Electrochemical Acetylene Reduction to Ethylene

A novel aqueous Zn–C2H2 battery is reported, which not only switches energy-consuming acetylene removal to electricity generation, but also reduces acetylene to ethylene through a unique discharge mechanism: C2H2+Zn+H2O→C2H4+ZnO. The Zn–C2H2 battery under a pure acetylene stream manifests an open-circuit potential of 1.14 V and a peak power density of 2.2 mW cm−2. For crude ethylene, the Zn–C2H2 battery produces polymer-grade ethylene.