Abstracto

Continuous Flow Reactors: A Precise Review

Shivaji A Thorat*, Like Chen, Hongwei Yang

Flow chemistry has being used in petrochemicals and bulk chemicals production from several decades however it has seen only significant interest in pharmaceutical industry and fine chemicals from about a decade. Nowadays, there are many kinds of flow chemistry equipment in the market for process research and development as well as for continuous manufacturing. However, there is still considerable gap between the increasing interest in this technology and the available information especially about the diverse flow equipment. In flow technology the most important part is to choose the proper flow reactor to meet the need of a specific reaction. Typically, physical state of the feed solution as well as reaction mixture is the crucial element to be considered in choosing flow reactor. Choice of flow reactor is also dependent on the specific window of process parameters and the required efficiency of mass and heat transfer. In this review we would discuss regarding prime flow reactors those are in use in chemical and pharmaceutical industry, allowing the correct reactor to be chosen to suit the required chemistry. Moreover, the other unit operations, including inline quench, inline and online monitoring of reactions and industrial applications of flow mode would be discussed as well.