Scalable thin-layer membrane reactor for heterogeneous and homogeneous catalytic gas-liquid reactions

• Main Authors: Mo, Yiming (Contributor), Imbrogno, Joseph M (Contributor), Zhang, Haomiao (Contributor), Jensen, Klavs F (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2018-08-22T18:56:46Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Catalytic gas-liquid reactions have potential as environmentally benign methods for organic synthesis, particularly hydrogenation and oxidation reactions. However, safety and scalability are concerns in the application of gas-liquid reactions. In this work, we develop and demonstrate a scalable, sustainable, and safe thin-layer membrane reactor for heterogeneous Pd-catalyzed hydrogenations and homogenous Cu(I)/TEMPO alcohol oxidations. The implementation of a Teflon amorphous fluoroplastic (AF) membrane and porous carbon cloth in the membrane reactor provides sufficient gas-liquid mass transfer to afford superior performance compared to conventional packed-bed or trickle-bed reactors. The membrane separates the gas from the liquid, which avoids the formation of explosive mixtures for oxygenation reactions and simplifies the two-phase hydrodynamics to facilitate scale-up by stacking modules, while significantly reducing gas consumption. In addition, 3-dimensional simulations deliver insights into the mass transfer and hydrodynamic behavior to inform optimal membrane reactor design and operation.