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Electrified synthesis of n-propanol using a dilute alloy catalyst

Nature Catalysis volume 8, pages 239–247 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

N-propanol is an important industrial solvent but the current industrial routes for its production rely on fossil fuels and generate high carbon dioxide emissions. Replacing fossil processes with electrochemical systems powered using renewable energy offers one route to reduce the carbon intensity of n-propanol manufacture. The electrosynthesis of n-propanol via carbon monoxide electroreduction relies on the coupling of C1 and C2 intermediates, and these are preferentially stabilized on different sites. Here we pursued the synthesis of catalysts in which a high-oxygen-affinity metal (such as Sn in the best catalysts herein) is present in dilute quantities within a Cu matrix. The Sn–Cu catalyst is then formed into a catalyst/carbon/ionomer heterojunction architecture that reverses electro-osmotic drag to concentrate the n-propanol produced. We achieve n-propanol electrosynthesis from carbon monoxide with a Faradaic efficiency of 47 ± 3% and a concentration of 30 wt% at an energy efficiency of 24%. We report stable n-propanol electrosynthesis for 120 h in a membrane-electrode assembly electrolyser.

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Fig. 1: Electrosynthesis of n-propanol by using renewable energy.
Fig. 2: Design criteria and structure of the electrocatalyst.
Fig. 3: In situ ATR-SEIRAS studies.
Fig. 4: Performance of n-propanol production on the Sn–Cu atomically dilute alloy catalyst.

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Data availability

Data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. This research used synchrotron resources of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy, Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, and was supported by the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357 as well as by the Canadian Light Source and its funding partners. DFT calculations were performed on the Niagara supercomputer at the SciNet HPC Consortium. SciNet is funded by: the Canada Foundation for Innovation; the Government of Ontario; the Ontario Research Fund—Research Excellence and the University of Toronto. X.W. acknowledges the Zhejiang University Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Funding. W.N. acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoctoral Mobility Fellowship (grant no. P500PN_202906).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Yuanjun Chen, Xinyue Wang, Xiao-Yan Li, Rui Kai Miao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Yuanjun Chen, Xinyue Wang, Xiao-Yan Li, Jianan Erick Huang, Weiyan Ni, Pengfei Ou & Edward H. Sargent

  2. Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Xinyue Wang, Zilin Zhao, Senlin Chu & Yang Hou

  3. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Rui Kai Miao, Jinhong Wu, Zunmin Guo, Yi Xu & David Sinton

  4. Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Juncai Dong

  5. College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Chuhao Liu & Bingjun Xu

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Contributions

E.H.S. and D.S. supervised the project. Y.C. conceived the idea, designed and conducted the experiments, and wrote the paper. X.W. carried out the experiments and contributed to data analysis and paper writing. X.-Y.L. performed the DFT calculations. R.K.M. performed experiments for the CCIH catalyst system, TEA and LCA. J.D. contributed to XAS data analysis. Z.Z. and C.L. contributed to in situ ATR-SEIRAS measurements. S.C. contributed to material characterizations. J.E.H. contributed to in situ Raman measurements. J.W. contributed to TEA. W.N. contributed to XAS measurements. P.O. assisted with DFT calculations. Z.G. and Y.X. contributed to CCIH catalyst system. B.X. and Y.H. contributed to data analysis and discussions and paper preparation. All authors discussed the results and assisted with paper preparation.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yang Hou, David Sinton or Edward H. Sargent.

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Competing interests

There is a US provisional patent application (63/584,253) titled ‘Processes and systems for the electrochemical reduction of carbon monoxide to propanol, cathode catalysts and cathodes used in the same’ filed by the authors Y.C., X.W., R.K.M., D.S. and E.H.S. and their institutions. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Catalysis thanks Guiyan Zang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Notes 1–5, Figs. 1–55 and Tables 1–10.

Supplementary Data 1

The atomic coordinates of the optimized models.

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Numerical data.

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Numerical data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Numerical data.

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Chen, Y., Wang, X., Li, XY. et al. Electrified synthesis of n-propanol using a dilute alloy catalyst. Nat Catal 8, 239–247 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-025-01301-0

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