Recently, the Key Laboratory of Clean Utilization in Complex Non-ferrous Metal Resources, co-established by KUST and MOST in collaboration with North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), published aresearch article entitled: A Tailored Multi-Functional Catalyst for Ultra-Efficient Styrene Production Under A Cyclic Redox Scheme in Nature Communications, a subsidiary of Springer Nature.Primary author Professor ZHU Xing of KUST, joint primary author and corresponding author Dr. GAO Yunfei and Professor LI Fanxing of NCSU, Professor WANG Hua of KUST, Dr. BAO Zhenghong, WU Zili of ORNL, Dr. WANG Xijun, Dr Vasudev Haribal, Ph.D. students LIU Junchen and Dr. Luke Neal of NCSU all participated in the study, where KUST was the main authoring unit. This study was completed under the support of the Key Laboratory and North Carolina State University. It is theSecond time that Professor Wang's team has published relevant research results in Nature’s subsidiary since 2019.

Styrene is a synthetic chemical widely used to make plastics, resins and other materials, but it has high energy-consumption and intensive CO2-discharging. The study reports a new chemical-looping-based redox oxidative dehydrogenation (redox-ODH) facilitated by a redox catalyst. The redox-ODH converts ethylbenzene to styrene with up to 91% single-pass conversion, while the traditional catalytic dehydrogenation (DH) converts ethylbenzene to styrene with only 54%. A large amount of steam is not necessarily needed for styrene production under the redox-ODH scheme, leading to an 82% energy-savings and an 79% CO2-emission reduction. It is an important breakthrough in the production of styrene to be more energy-saving and environmentally friendly.

Professor WANG Hua's team has been engaged in metallurgical energy-saving and emission reduction for a long time. Since 2000, his team has carried out researches on chemical-looping technology using CO2 capture and emission reduction in China. They won the Special Prize for Natural Science Award of Yunnan Province in 2020 and Professor WANG serves as the chairman of the China Conference on Chemical Looping to promote the development and exchange in this field. Professor ZHU Xing mainly engages in chemical-looping energy conversion.

Link：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21374-2

Translated by: CAI Siqing, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures

Edited by: ZHANG Wei, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures (English)

Source: Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering and Key Laboratory (MOST) of Clean Utilization in Complex Non-ferrous Metal Resources

Issued by: Division of Overseas Cooperation (English)

Edited by: KUST News Center (Chinese)