Rapid screening and experimental investigation of oxygen carriers for chemical looping oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane

Chemical looping oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (CLODHE) is a promising alternative to ethylene production. The key to this technology is the development of oxygen carriers. In this paper, a novel rapid screening strategy for perovskite oxygen carriers, based on machine learning and thermodynamics, is proposed. Dozens of thermodynamically feasible oxygen carriers were screened for the CLODHE process and three of them were selected for further experimental verification. Among the selected oxygen carriers, LaCuO₃ had the best performance. LaCuO₃ achieved an ethane conversion of 51.3 % and an ethylene selectivity of 93.93 % over 10 cycles at 750 °C and 18,000 ml·h^-1·g^-1, respectively. XPS patterns showed that the composition and content of oxygen remained almost unaltered before and after the cycling, which may be the reason for its stability. The decreased in Cu³⁺ indicated it played a crucial role in oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane. SEM-EDS patterns showed that the oxygen carriers became agglomerated after cycling, leading to a slight reduction in reactivity. The proposed strategy is appropriate for binary to quaternary perovskites and can also be applied to other reactions, providing insights into material design and accelerating their development.