Electrochemical reduction of acetonitrile to ethylamine.

Electrifying chemical manufacturing using renewable energy is an attractive approach to reduce the dependence on fossil energy sources in chemical industries. Primary amines are important organic building blocks; however, the synthesis is often hindered by the poor selectivity because of the formation of secondary and tertiary amine byproducts. Herein, we report an electrocatalytic route to produce ethylamine selectively through an electroreduction of acetonitrile at ambient temperature and pressure. Among all the electrocatalysts, Cu nanoparticles exhibit the highest ethylamine Faradaic efficiency (~96%) at -0.29 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode. Under optimal conditions, we achieve an ethylamine partial current density of 846 mA cm-2. A 20-hour stable performance is demonstrated on Cu at 100 mA cm-2 with an 86% ethylamine Faradaic efficiency. Moreover, the reaction mechanism is investigated by computational study, which suggests the high ethylamine selectivity on Cu is due to the moderate binding affinity for the reaction intermediates.

Citation

Rong Xia, Dong Tian, Shyam Kattel, Bjorn Hasa, Haeun Shin, Xinbin Ma, Jingguang G Chen, Feng Jiao. Electrochemical reduction of acetonitrile to ethylamine. Nature communications. 2021 Mar 29;12(1):1949

PMID: 33782400

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