Design and Characterization of a Scaled-up Ultrasonic Flow Reactor

Abstract

Ultrasonic microreactors are increasingly applied to particle synthesis, crystallization processes, or organic synthesis involving solids due to the clogging prevention offered by ultrasound irradiation. However, the further application of this technology is limited by the scalability of ultrasonic flow reactors. In this work, we combined experiments and numerical simulations for the design of a scaled-up flow reactor. The reactor consists of a perfluoroalkoxy alkane (PFA) tubing immersed in a box to transmit the ultrasound and provide temperature control, to which six Langevin multifrequency transducers are attached. The acoustic pressure distribution was investigated to characterize the effect of ultrasound frequency and the transducer configurations on particle size distribution for the model reaction of barium sulfate synthesis.Operating the scaled-up reactor with six transducers at a frequency of 40 kHz resulted in an acoustic wave distribution with maximum acoustic pressures in the vicinity of the tubular reactor, thus leading to a small particle size distribution and consequently clogging prevention. The productivity of the scaled-up reactor was 14g/h barium sulfate at a remarkably low applied ultrasound power of 0.48W/mL, highlighting the efficient design and the further scale-up potential.

Understanding flow chemistry for the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients

“…With very low ultrasound power (0.48 W/mL), remarkable amount of BaSO 4 (14 g/h) was achieved. It certainly opens the door for the scalable ultrasound-assisted flow syntheses ( Delacour et al., 2020 ). Performic acid (PFA) is an unstable, but industrially useful compound.…”

CHAPTER 8. Sustainable Activation of Chemical Substrates Under Sonochemical Conditions

“…Recently, Delacour et al 114 developed a scaled-up ultrasonic reactor to prevent Royal Society of Chemistry -Book Chapter X clogging in particle forming reactions. The millireactor was used for the synthesis of barium sulphate.…”

Multi-frequency sonoreactor characterisation in the frequency domain using a semi-empirical bubbly liquid model

“…Current simulations can be categorised into those that consider the propagation medium as a pure liquid [12] , [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] , and those that consider the effects of bubbles in the medium [13] , [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] . Bubbly-liquid models gained popularity in recent times as it is believed to provide a better representation of the fluid property in ultrasonic systems.…”