Boosted dehydrogenation of ethane over porous vanadium-based single crystals

In this study, porous vanadium-based single crystal powders are prepared by a conventional and simple method. The synthesised V6O13, VO2, V2O3 and vanadium nitride (VN) single crystal powders are porous octahedral structured materials with approximately 4 μm particle sizes. Results show that the vanadium-based porous single crystal powders effectively catalyse ethane dehydrogenation at 680 °C, and the selectivity to ethylene is over 60%. VN exhibits excellent catalytic activity for ethane dehydrogenation at 680 °C with approximately 30% conversion of ethane and about 68% selectivity to ethylene, and it exhibits good stability even after working for 48 hours. The results of this study provide important value for designing and application of other metal-based porous single-crystal materials.