We report the development of a scalable continuous Taylor vortex reactor for both UV and visible photochemistry. This builds on our recent report (Org. Process Res. Dev. 2017, 21, 1042) detailing a new approach to continuous visible photochemistry. Here we expand this by showing that our approach can also be applied to UV photochemistry and that either UV or visible photochemistry can be scaled-up using our design. We have achieved scale-up in productivity of over 300× with a visible light photo-oxidation that requires oxygen gas and 10× with a UV induced [2+2] cycloaddition obtaining scales of up to 7.45 kg day-1 for the latter. Furthermore, we demonstrate that oxygen is efficiently taken up in to the reactions of singlet O2 and, for the examples examined, that near-stoichiometric quantities of oxygen can be used with little loss of reactor productivity. Furthermore, our design should scalable to substantially larger size as well as having the potential for scaling-out with reactors in parallel.

We report the development of a small footprint continuous electrochemical Taylor vortex reactor capable of processing kilogram quantities of material per day. This report builds upon our previous development of a scalable photochemical Taylor vortex reactor (Org. Process Res. Dev. 2017, 21, 1042; 2020, 24, 201–206). It describes a static and rotating electrode system that allows for enhanced mixing within the annular gap between the electrodes. We demonstrate that the size of the annular gap and the rotation speed of the electrode are important for both conversion of the substrate and selectivity of the product exemplified using the methoxylation of N-formylpyrrolidine. The employment of a cooling jacket was necessary for scaling the reaction in order to manage the heat generated by electrodes at higher currents (up to 30 A, >270 mA cm–2) allowing multimole productivity per day of methoxylation product to be achieved. The electrochemical oxidation of thioanisole was also studied, and it was demonstrated that the reactor has the performance to produce up to 400 g day–1 of either of the corresponding sulfoxide or sulfone while maintaining a very high reaction selectivity (>97%) to the desired product. This development completes a suite of vortex reactor designs that can be used for photo-, thermal-, or electrochemistry, all of which decouple residence time from mixing. This opens up the possibility of performing continuous multistep reactions at scale with flexibility in optimizing processes.

Flows throughout different zones of turbines have been investigated using large eddy simulation (LES) and hybrid Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes-LES (RANS-LES) methods and contrasted with RANS modeling, which is more typically used in the design environment. The studied cases include low and high-pressure turbine cascades, real surface roughness effects, internal cooling ducts, trailing edge cut-backs, and labyrinth and rim seals. Evidence is presented that shows that LES and hybrid RANS-LES produces higher quality data than RANS/URANS for a wide range of flows. The higher level of physics that is resolved allows for greater flow physics insight, which is valuable for improving designs and refining lower order models. Turbine zones are categorized by flow type to assist in choosing the appropriate eddy resolving method and to estimate the computational cost.

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