Drivers for Performing Oxidations in Micro Reactors

Micro heat exchangers and also any kind of micro channel devices, heated or cooled externally, offer considerably improved heat transfer owing to their large internal specific surface areas. Hence they offer unique possibilities to steer oxidations to increased selectivity of the partial-oxidation products. 

It has been shown, particularly for the latter reaction and for the ethylene oxide process, that micro reactors allow safe processing of otherwise hazardous oxidations [4, 26, 40, 42, 43, 84]. This is first due to the fact that the inner volume of micro reactors is small so that explosions also happen only on a micro scale . The 

Chemical Micro Process Engineering Fundamentals, Modelling and Reactions Volker Hessel, Steffen Hardt, Holger Lowe 

Copyright 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH Co. KGaA, Weinheim ISBN 3-527-30741-9 

As far as extinction/ignition behavior is concerned, oxidations in micro reactors can exhibit varied temperature profiles [19, 56, 57, 59-61]. As a consequence of their very distinct heat transfer characteristics, micro reactors can allow autofhermal operation at a different temperature level compared with processing in conventional reactors. As an example, this may raise the selectivity of value products. 

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