Abstract

Continuous Flow Process: A New Paradigm in Process Intensification for Materials and Chemicals Manufacturing

Anil Kumar, Professor, IIT Bombay

Continuous flow process provides a potential alternative to batch synthesis because of its inherent advantages such as very efficient heat exchange, high batch to batch reproducibility, fast mixing, high throughput, safety, and the ability to do multistep telescoping synthesis.  Due to these advantages, these processes have been referred to as the most promising “Green Technology”. In fact, continuous flow processes are projected to be the “CHEMICAL FACTORIES” of tomorrow. Continuous flow processes also provide an “On-Demand” synthesis with complete control over reproducibility, size, shape and these parameters can be achieved at various scales (lab synthesis to pilot to bulk production) with excellent reproducibility. This opens up the opportunity for synthetic chemists to prepare materials with precise control over critical molecular design parameters. It also enables one to carry out material synthesis at higher temperatures that were outside the domain of an organic synthetic lab. We have been exploring continuous flow processes for the synthesis of conjugated polymers, nanoparticles and nanofibers, fine chemicals, catalysis for heterogeneous processes etc. In this presentation, I will review some of the recent advances in these directions and some results from our laboratory.