Encapsulated catalysts in flow chemistry for continues chemical processes
Improvements in both the economic effectiveness and environmental impacts to the fine chemical industry are necessary to maintain European competitiveness and reduce the global environmental cost of these products. Both of these goals can be accomplished by making existing processes more efficient. Catalysts facilitate the development of efficient chemical processes and are required for the sophisticated transformations used to produce high valued pharmaceutical and fragrance products. A process using catalysis requires significantly less energy, reactor volume, input feedstock and solvents in order to produce a desired material. However, the application of homogeneous catalysts for sophisticated transformations requires separating the product from the catalyst. Many separation processes are destructive to the catalytic material leading to limited use, driving the cost of the catalyst and the subsequent fine chemical processes. This separation limits reactor design to batch reactors, which are less efficient in terms of energy and solvents than flow type reactors. The EnCatFlow project will utilize encapsulated catalysts in a flow membrane reactor. This would uniquely offer both catalyst protection and recyclability in a flow reactor format unlike any currently developing technologies, allowing the development of novel commercially competing processes. Our team includes two industrial partners that have expertise in flow chemistry, catalyst development, and an expert from the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, next to the PI and the technical researcher. A envisioned process is discussed with PWF as the end-user. The final goal is to develop commercially competing processes and to start a spin off company to commercialise the technology.