Interfacial electrochemical-chemical reaction coupling for efficient olefin oxidation to glycols

Summary

Coupling electrochemical and chemical reactions has been demonstrated in traditional tandem reactor systems, but their practical applications are still distilled down to individual reactor optimizations. Here, we demonstrate a fully integrated system that presents significantly improved catalytic performance when compared with traditional tandem systems. Using electrosynthesis of hydrogen peroxide followed by olefin epoxidation reaction as a representative example, we demonstrated that, by confining the chemical reaction right at the electrode/electrolyte interface in our solid electrolyte reactor, we can fully leverage the interfacial high concentration of H₂O₂ product from electrocatalysis to boost the following ethylene epoxidation reaction, which represented a 3-fold improvement in electrolyte-free ethylene glycol generation when compared with a tandem reactor system. This integration strategy can be extended to other electrochemical-chemical coupling reactions, especially when the coupled reaction is sensitive to reactant concentrations, which could avoid energy-intensive separation or concentration steps typically needed between the electrochemical and chemical reactions.