Large, Highly Modular Narrow-Gap Electrolytic Flow Cell and Application in Dehydrogenative Cross-Coupling of Phenols

The successive scale-up of electrochemical reactions is crucial with regards to the implementation of technical electro-organic syntheses. Therefore, we developed a scalable modular parallel plate electrochemical flow cell. One distinctive feature of this flow cell is that the temperature of the electrodes can be easily controlled from the back side via an external cooling circuit. That enables a high reproducibility of electrochemical conversions. By keeping the gap between the electrodes narrow, small amounts or no supporting electrolyte is required. The practicability and performance of the novel flow cell was validated by three different anodic phenol-phenol cross-couplings as test reactions.