(390a) Flow Chemistry with Microchemical Systems for Chemicals, Energy, Healthcare, and Sustainability

Flow chemistry, important to the global chemicals, energy, and healthcare segments, depends on the symbiosis between chemical reaction engineering and organic synthesis.  The design of microchemical systems for flow chemistry impacts a broad cross-section of societal issues.  As an example, studying chemical reactions on-chip has advantages in fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals research and manufacturing. Using microchemical systems to understand the science reduces discovery times, solvent waste consumption, and the energy requirements for their preparation at laboratory and production scales, as compared to conventional batch-wise processing.  A key area is aqueous-phase catalyzed reactions that require understanding of reaction and transport time scales using classical chemical reaction engineering principles.  Aqueous-phase catalyzed Sonogashira couplings yield aryl heteroatoms for many different synthetic and natural applications.  On-chip investigations of natural macromolecular aromatics, as examples asphaltenes, directly impact conventional and unconventional energy productions.  High-throughput packed-bed microreactors with online analytics generate knowledge on the accumulation mechanisms in unconsolidated, siliceous materials.  Flow and reaction in porous media is an important micro-scale, laminar flow area that remains central to green chemistry and environmental sciences.  Methane-water interactions with naturally derived macromolecules, as an example methane-cyclodextrin thermodynamics, are key to methane as a resource for chemicals, its natural sequestration, and polysaccharide aqueous chemistry that catalyzes the formation and dissociation of inclusion compounds.  Transport limitations render kinetics of inclusion materials, such as hybrid cyclodextrin-gas hydrates, challenging to study.  Their on-chip formation and dissociation directly impact the energy sector, yet the potential exists for use in chemo-selective reactive separations.  Partnerships between scientists and engineers are needed to drive innovations in flow chemistry using microchemical systems and chemical reaction engineering is key to sustainability.