Electrochemical dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene in solid oxide electrolyzer

Solid oxide electrolysis cell as an energy conversion device, has attracted much attention in recent years due to its high efficiency and capacity. In this work, we prepare the metal-oxide materials, Ce0.9(NixCu1-x)0.1O2-δ (x = 0–1), and alloy Ni/Cu nanoparticles are exsolved from the CeO2 surface after treatment in an H2/Ar reducing atmosphere, which is formed the metal-oxide interfaces. The current density reaches 0.51 A cm−2 at 700 °C, 1.0 V and the ethane conversion rate is 38.9% with the ethylene yield of 24.9%, and it demonstrates outstanding stability even after being operated continuously for a period of one hundred hours. The material with in-situ precipitation metal-oxide interface shows significantly enhanced ethane electrolytic activity, which is also confirmed by density functional theory. This work demonstrates the potential application of electrochemical ethane oxidative dehydrogenation.