Development and Assembly of a Flow Cell for Single‐Pass Continuous Electroorganic Synthesis Using Laser‐Cut Components

Abstract

Flow electrolysis cells are essential for the scale up of synthetic organic electrochemistry. We have developed a simple and inexpensive parallel plate flow cell that can be easily assembled using a stack of laser‐cut Mylar foils, which act as gaskets, insulating material, interelectrode gap and flow channel. The ease with which the laser‐cutting pattern can be customized has enabled the development of interelectrode separators with mixing geometries, which improve the mass transfer and thus the current efficiency. The performance of the flow electrolysis cell has been evaluated using the anodic decarboxylative methoxylation of diphenylacetic acid as model transformation. Very high conversions and selectivities have been achieved with single‐pass processing, with nearly quantitative current efficiency in some cases.

Electrochemical Oxidation of Alcohols Using Nickel Oxide Hydroxide as Heterogeneous Electrocatalyst in Batch and Continuous Flow

“…Thus, the experimental procedure for the generation of a NiOOH layer on the anode surface was adapted to flow conditions in recirculation mode (Figure 2a). The flow cell utilized, which has been recently described in detail, 34 consisted of a parallel plate arrangement. It featured an electrode surface contact area of 6.4 cm 2 and a variable interelectrode gap (0.3 mm to 0.9 mm) (190 to 570 μL cell volume) (see Figure S1).…”

Sustainable Synthesis of Noroxymorphone via a Key Electrochemical N-Demethylation Step

“…47−50 To ensure the smooth scale up of our electrochemical procedure, the electrolysis was transferred to a laboratory-scale flow cell. The cell, which has been described elsewhere, 51 consisted of two parallel plate electrodes (impervious graphite as the anode material and stainless steel as the cathode) separated by a polymer membrane containing a flow channel (see Figure S1). The flow channel provided an electrode surface contact area of 6.4 cm 2 , an interelectrode gap of 0.1 mm, and a reactor volume of 63 μL.…”

Sustainable electrochemical decarboxylative acetoxylation of aminoacids in batch and continuous flow

“…All flow electrolysis experiments were carried out in a parallel plate flow cell recently described. 33 The cell featured an electrode surface contact area of 6.4 cm 2 and a channel volume of 190 μL (0.3 mm interelectrode distance). As the cell end plates were made of aluminum, it could be easily heated to 40 °C by simply placing it on a hot plate.…”