The Effect of Self-Optimisation Targets on the Methylation of Alcohols Using Dimethyl Carbonate in Supercritical CO2

• Published in: Journal of flow chemistry Vol. 2; no. 1; pp. 24 - 27
• Main Authors: Jumbam, Denis N., Skilton, Ryan A., Parrott, Andrew J., Bourne, Richard A., Poliakoff, Martyn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2012
• Subjects: Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Chemistry/Food Science; Green Chemistry; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Inorganic Chemistry; Nanochemistry; Organic Chemistry; automation; self-optimising reactors; green chemistry; supercritical fluids; flow chemistry
• ISSN: 2062-249X; 2063-0212
• DOI: 10.1556/jfchem.2012.00019

This paper describes the next stage in our development of self-optimising reactors. We demonstrate that the same reaction can be optimised for a series of different criteria including yield, space-time yield,
E
factor and a weighted yield function (the product of space-time yield and yield). In different experiments, we achieved 97.6% yield, space-time yield of 42.9 kg/L/h and
E
factors of 1.4 and 3.3 (including CO
2
) and the weighted yield, which gave a promising balance between yield,
E
factor and space-time yield.