Ethylene Glycol in Scientific Research

A research team from the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently used a room temperature Cu(II) ion-assisted in-situ reduction method to synthesize a new type of palladium nanocatalyst. The catalyst has an ultra-low precious metal loading (about 0.1%), excellent performance, and long life, which can greatly reduce the catalyst cost and save a large amount of precious metal resources. After the successful preparation of this catalyst, it is expected to form a new generation of coal-to-ethylene glycol catalyst technology.
Coal-to-ethylene glycol technology can not only effectively alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand of ethylene glycol in my country, but also improve the level of efficient and clean conversion and utilization of coal resources. The CO gas-phase oxidative coupling reaction to produce dimethyl oxalate is a key step in coal-to-ethylene glycol. The palladium loading in the catalysts that have been used is relatively high, which has greatly increased the catalyst cost.