Hydrogen Peroxide Synthesis UOP

Microreactors, due to the high wall-to-volume ratio and the absence of runaway, allow to safe operation within the explosion limits [179], thus enabling an increase in process productivity. A relevant case is the direct synthesis ofhydrogen peroxide [180], for which 

In addition to the inherently safe features of microchannel reactors, they allow rapid catalyst testing and have the option of the same catalyst type use, for example, washcoated, throughout the whole development cycle, up to pilot and production. Furthermore, mass transfer is improved through the increase in gas-liquid interfaces, and thermal control is also better due to larger exchange surfaces. 

Finally, chirality conservation must be maintained, because the a-hydrogen of the reactant is unstable under basic reaction conditions. Therefore, a small degree of racemization occurs, vhich needs to be minimized. 

Using a micro reactor the impurity by over-alkylation was 0.18%, while the batch impurity was 1.56% [181]. This was possible due the lower back-mbdng in the microflow system. The optical purity of the microreactor product was 98.4% as compared with 97.9% at batch level. 

1 Reay, D., Ramshaw, C. and Harvey, A. (2008) Process Intensification - Engineering for Efficiency, Sustainability and Flexibility, Elsevier (Butterworth Heinemann) Pub., Amsterdam. 

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