Isolated Fe(III)–O Sites Catalyze the Hydrogenation of Acetylene in Ethylene Flows under Front-End Industrial Conditions

The search for simple, earth-abundant, cheap, and nontoxic metal catalysts able to perform industrial hydrogenations is a topic of interest, transversal to many catalytic processes. Here, we show that isolated FeIII–O sites on solids are able to dissociate and chemoselectively transfer H2 to acetylene in an industrial process. For that, a novel, robust, and highly crystalline metal–organic framework (MOF), embedding FeIII–OH2 single sites within its pores, was prepared in multigram scale and used as an efficient catalyst for the hydrogenation of 1% acetylene in ethylene streams under front-end conditions. Cutting-edge X-ray crystallography allowed the resolution of the crystal structure and snapshotted the single-atom nature of the catalytic FeIII–O site. Translation of the active site concept to even more robust and inexpensive titania and zirconia supports enabled the industrially relevant hydrogenation of acetylene with similar activity to the Pd-catalyzed process.