SEMINAR

Microfluidic Flow Reactors as New Synthetic Chemical Tools

Dong-Pyo Kim, Yonsan Chaired Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering, POSTECH, Pohang, South Korea

Flow chemistry in the confined microfluidic space at submillimeter scale is attractive owing to inherent advantages such as efficient heat transfer and rapid mixing, enabling greater control of reaction conditions in easy up-scaling, and the integrated operation for productions of pharmaceutical drugs (API), cosmetics and specialty chemicals. At first part of the talk, general advantages of microfluidics against bulk reactors is introduced for better understanding on the reason why the flow-chemistry leads to superior chemical performance, even how it works for handing the short-lived intermediates at ultrafast manner. Secondly, numbering-up microreactor systems for scale-up production of chemicals and emulsions were devised with 3D-printed metal and polymer, towards developing an autonomous chemical workstation.