Drivers for Performing Aliphatics Nitrations in Micro Reactors

1 Drivers for Performing Aliphatics Nitrations in Micro Reactors 

Most nitrations are highly exothermic and hence release a lot of reaction heat for most experimental protocols [37, 94]. This high exothermicity may even lead to explosions [37,38]. Nitration agents frequently display acid corrosion [37]. For these reasons, nitrations are generally regarded as hazardous [37] [38]. 

Due to the heat release, nitrations are often lacking selectivity, i.e. many parallel, consecutive and decomposition processes are known to occur. As a result, product spectra are unusually wide and consequently yields and purity are low [37, 94]. 

Multi-phase processing of nitrated aromatics is also described in [31], including both organic and aqueous phases. Side reaction take place in the organic phase, whereas all other reactions occur in the aqueous phase and are limited by organic solubility. For this reason, enabling mass transfer by large interfaces is a key to affect product selectivity. 

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