Drivers for Performing Alkane Chlorination in Micro Reactors

1 Drivers for Performing Alkane Chlorination in Micro Reactors 

Side-chain photochlorination of toluene isocyanates yields important industrial intermediates for polyurethane synthesis, one of the most important classes of polymers [6]. The motivation for micro-channel processing stems mainly from enhancing the performance of the photo process. Illuminated thin liquid layers should have much higher photon efficiency (quantum yield) than given for conventional processing. In turn, this may lead to the use of low-intensity light sources and considerably decrease the energy consumption for a photolytic process [6] (see also [21]). 

Owing to the planar layer structure of most micro reactors, uniform illumination is yielded in addition, which can be maintained on increasing throughput by numbering-up [6]. Here, the individual reaction units are assembled in parallel again on a plane, but a larger one. 

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