The Tianjin University has developed a molybdenum carbide supported monoatomic catalyst for acetylene hydrogenation.Among these metal components,monoatomic nickel, monoatomic cobalt or monoatomic copper can form Ni‐Mo, Ni‐Co, and Ni‐Cu bonds with molybdenum atoms in MoC, which can enhance the adsorption and activation of hydrogen molecules to improve the hydrogenation activity.In addition, the adsorption of olefin intermediates on hydrogenation catalyst is suppressed owing to the size effect of single metal atom, thus ensuring high ethylene selectivity.

In an embodiment example, the 0.5%Ni/α‐MoC catalyst was used to catalyze a reaction gas containing 0.5%of acetylene, 5% of hydrogen, 50% of ethylene (with the remainder composed of nitrogen) under conditions covering a gas flowrate of 35 mL/min, a gas hourly space velocity of 84000 mL/(g∙h), with both the ethylene conversion and the ethylene selectivity reaching 100%.