Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Ethane: Superior Nb(2)O(5)-NiO/Ni-Foam Catalyst Tailored by Tuning Morphology of NiO-Precursors Grown on a Ni-Foam

Large-scale shale gas exploitation greatly enriches ethane resources, making the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene quite fascinating, but the qualified catalyst with unique combination of enhanced activity/selectivity, enhanced heat transfer, and low pressure drop presents a grand challenge. Herein, a high-performance Nb(2)O(5)-NiO/Ni-foam catalyst engineered from nano- to macroscale for this reaction is tailored by finely tuning the performance-relevant Nb(2)O(5)-NiO interaction that is strongly dependent on NiO-precursor morphology. Three NiO-precursors of different morphologies (clump, rod, and nanosheet) were directly grown onto Ni-foam followed by Nb(2)O(5) modification to obtain the catalyst products. Notably, the one from the NiO-precursor of nanosheet achieves the highest ethylene yield, in nature, because of markedly diminished unselective oxygen species due to enhanced interaction between Nb(2)O(5) and NiO nanosheet. An advanced catalyst is developed by further thinning the NiO-precursor nanosheet, which achieves 60% conversion with 80% selectivity and is stable for at least 240 h.