Addition of CuCl to supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) catalysts enhances the activity in the low temperature water–gas shift (WGS) reaction.

We report on the use of hollow-core photonic crystal fibers to monitor the evolution of chemical reactions. The combination of tight confinement and long interaction length allows single-pass spectroscopic measurements using less than a microliter volume of chemicals with good accuracy. As a proof of principle, we used here nonlinear Raman spectroscopy for a reaction screening of the acidic catalyzed esterification of methanol and acetic acid.

Acidic supported ionic liquid phase catalysts were investigated for the synthesis of oxymethylene dimethyl ethers (OMEs). The application of OME 1 and trioxane for the gas-phase synthesis of higher OMEs and in particular the generation of OME n with n higher than 3 was successfully demonstrated. Raising the pressure led to an increase in the conversion of OME 1 and to higher selectivity for higher molecular weight OMEs. Furthermore, a correlation between the ionic liquid's acidity and the catalytic activity was shown with higher acidity leading to higher conversion of trioxane and OME 1 . Moreover, successful long-term operation for more than 200 h time on stream has been demonstrated with good catalyst system stability.

We monitor the reaction of an acid with an alcohol inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fibre using Raman spectroscopy. The method uses tiny amount of chemicals and allows precise measurement of the activation energy.