Influence of Brönsted Acid Sites on Activated Carbon-Based Catalyst for Acetylene Dimerization

Activated carbon (AC) has been widely used as a support material with both tunable acidity and abundant functional groups for solid acid catalysts in various chemical processes such as acetylene dimerization. A facile, mild acid modification method that directly activates AC to generate rich defects and oxygen functional group surface structures with Brönsted acid sites and an enhanced conductivity is presented here. Impressively, the catalyst with optimized Brönsted acid sites and an enhanced dispersion of active components exhibited a superior acetylene dimerization catalytic activity. Moreover, theoretical calculations indicated that an increase in hydrogen concentration could inhibit the formation of coke. This research offered a feasible potential way to devise and construct a carbon-based solid acid catalyst with an excellent catalytic performance.