Solving the Clogging Problem: Precipitate‐Forming Reactions in Flow

Abstract

Solids go with the flow: A monodisperse flow in a microreactor provides an efficient method for keeping solid products away from channel walls. The use of a carrier phase, such as mineral oil, hexane, or toluene, enables solids to be synthesized without clogging of the reactor channels. Further injection points can be added to the microreactor to perform multistep syntheses (see picture).

Advanced reactor engineering with 3D printing for the continuous-flow synthesis of silver nanoparticles

“…47 Ag-NPs show a general tendency to agglomerate, leading to fouling on the reactor walls. 48 Under continuous flow conditions, this causes a constant change in the nature of the reactor walls, which prevents a controlled and stable formation of nanoparticles under steady state. Furthermore, the formation of Ag-NPs is strongly dependent on chemical and physical properties such as temperature, pH, stabilizer, all of them influencing the different kinetic processes typically responsible for this type of synthesis.…”

Coupling Microdroplet Microreactors with Mass Spectrometry: Reading the Contents of Single Droplets Online

“…[1][2][3][4] Microdroplets can be generated at rates in excess of thousands per second, with volumes ranging from nanoliters to femtoliters, and can be used to carry out enzymatic assays, [5,6] gene expression, [7] cell-based assays, [8][9][10][11] and chemical synthesis. [12,13] Furthermore, multiple operations such as droplet fusion, [14,15] division, [17] and sorting [18][19][20] can be integrated in lab-on-a-chip devices. The combination of all these advantages provides an extremely powerful platform for high-throughput chemistry and biochemistry.…”

Beyond Organometallic Flow Chemistry: The Principles Behind the Use of Continuous-Flow Reactors for Synthesis

“…158 However, this strategy works best when a segmented flow regime is used where intensified mixing patterns in the liquid slugs keep the particles in suspension and avoids interaction with the reactor walls. 159 A popular strategy to deal with insoluble materials, such as heterogeneous catalysts, is immobilization in a packed-bed reactor. This method is often used to avoid extensive downstream purification procedures.…”