Novel catalytic systems for green chemical process intensification

KV Raghavan

Process Intensification presents significant scientific challenges to chemists, biologists and chemical engineers while developing innovative systems and practices which can offer drastic reduction in chemical and energy consumptions, improvements in process safety decreased equipment volume and waste formation and increased conversions and selectivity towards desired product(s). In addition they can offer relatively cheaper and sustainable process options.

The recent advances in green chemistry and engineering show that novel catalytic systems have impacted the process intensification efforts significantly. The notable amongst them are catalysed reactive separations, novel reaction media, sono / microwave facilitated reactions, multiphase facilitated reactions etc. The reactive separations are integrated operations specially designed to achieve a positive shift in thermodynamic equilibrium for better yield of a selected reaction product and simultaneous enhancement of its separation efficiency. It has been established that reactive separation processes have contributed to 50 to 60 times enhancement in reaction rates, 80 times less reaction time conversions touching near 100% and 2 to 4 times reduced energy and operation costs.

An attempt will be made to highlight the state of knowledge in the area of developing novel reaction media like ionic liquids, supercritical fluids, micro emulsions, etc for chemical syntheses and the relative efficacies of these alternative options.