Chemical Engineering & Technology, Vol.28, No.4, 427-431, 2005
Microwave-assisted reaction engineering: Microwave apparatus at miniplant scale with online analysis
A new miniplant setup with online HPLC analysis that allows scale up of laboratory results from microwave-assisted experiments to pilot-plant scale is presented, and will help in transferring the advantages of microwave-assisted syntheses to a technical scale. Exit age and temperature distributions of the investigated miniplant setup are described. For the example of acidic saccharose hydrolysis an online HPLC analysis method was developed for fast and convenient detection of the reaction progress. In the following, also filter setup options that can be used to protect the analysis system from suspended particles or depositions are described and it is shown that analysis time is not significantly prolonged by the automated sampling procedure.