Micro Reactors, Flow Reactors and Continuous Flow Synthesis

Abstract

Dr Paul Watts is a reader in organic chemistry at The University of Hull and since graduating from the University of Bristol, where he completed a PhD in bio-organic natural product synthesis, he has led the Micro Reactor Group at Hull. In this role, he has published 90 papers, and he regularly contributes to the field by way of invited book chapters, review articles, and keynote lecturers on the subject of micro reaction technology in organic synthesis.Dr Charlotte Wiles is the Chief Technology Officer at Chemtrix BV, and has been actively researching within the area of micro reaction technology for 10 years, starting with a PhD entitled Micro reactors in organic chemistry, which she obtained from The University of Hull in 2003. In the past decade, she has authored many scientific papers and review articles, recently co-authoring a book on the subject of micro reaction technology in organic synthesis. More recently, she has tailored her experience to the development and evaluation of commercially available continuous flow reactors, systems and peripheral equipment.

Flow chemistry vs. flow analysis

“…Among those different components, the greatest attention is given to the design of flow-through reactors which function as the heart of systems for chemical syntheses in flow conditions [11,12,16,20,21]. Obviously, in analytical flow systems their main role is to allow fast and efficient performing reactions of derivatization of analytes into required species or elimination/decomposition of sample matrix components.…”

“…As indicated in numerous review papers, e.g. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] [19]. Close attention is paid to the design of microfluidics for chemical syntheses due to possibility of conducting even very complex multistep syntheses in microscale [20,21].…”

Microfluidics

“…On-chip reactions include organic synthesis 40 and immunoassays. 41 The most basic process is to introduce two or more reagent streams at a junction and to let them mix by diffusion.…”

“…Organic synthesis within microreactors can give high yields of product, 40 with specialized fields also being investigated such as radiopharmaceutical synthesis. Organic synthesis within microreactors can give high yields of product, 40 with specialized fields also being investigated such as radiopharmaceutical synthesis.…”

A Two-Step Continuous Flow Synthesis of 4-Nitropyridine

“…7 Employing microreaction technology is one way to increase the process safety and efficiency of fast highly exothermic reactions. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] In recent years, microreaction technology has emerged as a useful approach for the synthesis of fine chemicals and key pharmaceutical intermediates where either the poor selectivity of the product is inevitable in batch or there are situations where the reactions are highly exothermic. [11][12][13] Compared with reactions in batch mode, one major advantage of the microreactor is the submillimetre dimensions of flow structures, which permits chemical reactions to proceed with higher quality, on account of highly efficient mixing and excellent heat absorption.…”