Promoting Water Dissociation and Acetylene Transfer to Lower the Energy Consumption of Ethylene Electrosynthesis via Microenvironment Regulation

Abstract The critical challenge in the conversion of electrocatalytic acetylene (C 2 H 2 ) to ethylene (C 2 H 4 ) is excessive energy consumption caused by sluggish hydrogenation kinetics, which still restricts its practical application potential. Herein, we theoretically and experimentally verify that concentrating surface‐active hydrogen and C 2 H 2 could accelerate hydrogenation kinetics, thereby reducing energy consumption. Then, electrochemically reduced copper (Cu) with abundant surfactants (ER‐Cu) is proposed to modulate the microenvironment to regulate the interfacial species. Consequently, a partial current density of C 2 H 4 ( j C2H4 ) of 0.42 A cm −2 and a turnover frequency of 1.41 s −1 are achieved over ER‐Cu, leading to an energy consumption reduction of 10.3% compared with the thermally reduced counterpart. A series of mechanistic explorations indicates that the as‐prepared ER‐Cu not only enhances water dissociation but also benefits the adsorption and mass transfer of C 2 H 2 feedstocks due to the broken hydrogen bond network, resulting in lower energy consumption.