Selectivity Gains and Energy Savings for the Industrial Phenyl Boronic Acid Process Using Micromixer/Tubular Reactors

An industrial production-scale process currently conducted at Clariant site/Frankfurt, termed Phenyl Boronic Acid Process from here on, was investigated at laboratory-scale using two micromixer/tubular reactor configurations, being equipped with either a glass interdigital (for details see (1) Ehrfeld, W.; Golbig, K.; Hessel, V.; Lowe, H.; Richter, T. Characterization of mixing in micromixers by a test reaction:  single mixing units and mixer arrays. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 1999, 38, (3), 1075−1082; (2) Hessel, V.; Hardt, S.; Lowe, H.; Schonfeld, F. Laminar mixing in different interdigital micromixers - Part I:  Experimental characterization. AIChE J. 2003, 49, 566−577; (3) Hardt, S.; Schonfeld, F. Laminar Mixing in Different Interdigital Micromixers - Part 2:  Numerical Simulations. AIChE J. 2003, 49, 578−584; (4) Herweck, T.; Hardt, S.; Hessel, V.; Lowe, H.; Hofmann, C.; Weise, F.; Dietrich, T.; Freitag, A. Visualization of Flow Patterns and Chemical Synthesis in Transparent Micromixers. In Topical Confere...