Recent progress on photoreactions in microreactors

Matsushita, Yoshihisa; Ichimura, Teijiro; Ohba, Nobuko; Kumada, Shinji; Sakeda, Kosaku; Suzuki, Tadashi; Tanibata, Hideki; Murata, Toshiaki

doi:10.1351/pac200779111959

Pure Appl. Chem., 2007, Vol. 79, No. 11, pp. 1959-1968

http://dx.doi.org/10.1351/pac200779111959

Recent progress on photoreactions in microreactors

Yoshihisa Matsushita¹, Teijiro Ichimura², Nobuko Ohba², Shinji Kumada², Kosaku Sakeda², Tadashi Suzuki², Hideki Tanibata³ and Toshiaki Murata⁴

¹ Department of Chemistry, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ohokayama, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan
² Department of Chemistry and Materials Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ohokayama, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan
³ Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan
⁴ Mitsui Zosen Plant Engineering Inc., Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: A microreaction system for organic photoreactions was developed, and the processes of diastereo-differentiating photosensitized reaction, photocatalytic oxidation and reduction of organic compounds, and amine N-alkylation were examined in microspace. These model reactions proceeded very rapidly with considerably large photonic efficiencies because of some distinct properties of microreactors for photoreactions, such as higher spatial illumination homogeneity and better light penetration through the entire reactor depth, and large surface-to-volume ratio in comparison with large-scale batch reactors. These results suggest feasibility of microreaction systems on organic photoreactions.