Accelerated chemistry discovery and optimization in multiphase microreactor systems

Microreactors are being increasingly used on the laboratory scale for developing new routes for chemical and material synthesis and for extracting kinetic information in a rapid fashion, owing to the greatly improved control over flow, heat and mass transfer, and reaction in miniaturized channel systems compared to conventional batch reactors. In this lecture, I will give an overview of microreactors dealing with multiphase flow for accelerating chemical process development. Several topics will be covered including novel chemical transformations, advanced material synthesis, and kinetic investigation in microreactors operated under two- and three-phase flow modes, as well as the inline integration of spectroscopy into microreactors for the real-time diagnosis of chemistry and catalysts, which combines my work experience in this field. The interplay between the underlying chemistry and the fundamental flow physics in microreactors will be specially addressed. It will be shown that multiphase flow processing in microreactors, with additional functionalities enabled typically by integration of spectroscopy, holds great promises for a fast chemistry discovery and optimization and therefore opens new possibilities for accelerated serendipity