Carbon-confined Cu-Pd alloy nanoparticles as high-performance catalysts for acetylene selective hydrogenation

A catalyst with high selectivity for acetylene selective hydrogenation is highly desirable, yet ideal selectivity often comes at the price of activity loss. Here, a carbon confined Cu15Pd catalyst (Cu15[email protected]) was fabricated through an eco-friendly and efficient approach, which improves ethylene selectivity while at the same time, maintains high activity. Under optimized conditions, acetylene conversion of 100% and ethylene selectivity of 91% were simultaneously achieved. Comprehensive characterization and DFT reveal that the carbon layer not only promotes the formation of smaller nanoparticles, but effectively inhibits the production of green oil, which is associated to the confined spatial microenvironment by the carbon layer, posing steric hindrance to chain growth from acetylene coupling. A series of carbon confined Cu and Ag-based bimetal catalysts were fabricated through the same method, proving the facilitation of carbon layer on such selective hydrogenation universal, and also showed great potential of our method and catalysts in practical application.