This review highlights fundamental and applied aspects of the synthesis of light olefins from a variety of renewable and fossil feedstocks and looks at future trends and opportunities.
Direct functionalization of methane selectively to value-added chemicals is still one of the main challenges in modern science. Acetic acid is an important industrial chemical produced nowadays by expensive and environmentally unfriendly carbonylation of methanol using homogeneous catalysts. Here, we report a new photocatalytic reaction route to synthesize acetic acid from CH 4 and CO at room temperature using water as the sole external oxygen source. The optimized photocatalyst consists of a TiO 2 support and ammonium phosphotungstic polyoxometalate (NPW) clusters anchored with isolated Pt single atoms (Pt 1 ). It enables a stable synthesis of 5.7 mmol•L −1 acetic acid solution in 60 h with the selectivity over 90% and 66% to acetic acid on liquid-phase and carbon basis, respectively, with the production of 99 mol of acetic acid per mol of Pt. Combined isotopic and in situ spectroscopy investigation suggests that synthesis of acetic acid proceeds via a photocatalytic oxidative carbonylation of methane over the Pt 1 sites, with the methane activation facilitated by water-derived hydroxyl radicals.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.