Microreactors and the continuous reaction technology they represent have been a hot topic in the chemical industry for the last decade. More and more research institutions and companies are focusing on microreactor equipment, but continuous production is still not widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. "People are generally reluctant to adopt production technologies they are not familiar with," and this is also true for the pharmaceutical industry. Many Chinese pharmaceutical companies are plagued by high manufacturing costs and cling to the old "batch production" model. This is a reflection of the industry's focus on profitability over quality. In fact, continuous production offers many advantages in terms of lower energy consumption, reduced waste, consistent quality, and higher levels of automation, improving safety and labor productivity, as well as the ability to make compounds that cannot be mass-produced. In the long run, continuous production is the way to go for chemical production.
Microreactor and microchannel technology has been developed in China for more than 30 years, and excellent data and results have been achieved in the field of small flux experiments, but the utilization rate of small pilot and pilot equipment is extremely low, and large flow industrial operation has not been seen much. Ltd., a company I would like to recommend to you today, is committed to the use of self-developed microreactors and their supporting related equipment and complete sets of industrialization technology to realize the automated continuous mass production of microreactors with large flow rates of 10,000 tons/year.
Zhongshan Zhian Chemical Technology Co., Ltd. independently developed a new microreactor of 20 liters/minute and successfully put it into production at one time! This reaction device is different from traditional microchannel equipment, pipe reactor and reactor, it is a new type of microreactor (shorter fluid channel, higher efficiency, more versatile, customized for different types of reactions and fluxes), and can be applied to dozens of conventional reactions and hazardous units.
Microreactors have the following advantages compared to kettle reactors:
1、Wider and higher reaction temperature range, faster reaction speed
Compared with kettle type, the control range of reaction temperature of micro reactor reaction is wider and higher. Depending on the situation, the microreactor is higher than the reaction temperature of kettle type by 3-30℃, so the reaction rate is much higher than that of kettle type, and the reaction that takes more than ten hours to complete in the microreactor can be completed in just a few seconds to ten minutes.
2、Good heat and mass transfer effect
Because the flow channel diameter is determined according to the flow rate and fluid nature, and the special structure is added according to the fluid nature, the fluid flow rate is fast, the mixing effect is good, the heat and mass transfer is much higher than the kettle reaction, generally it is 3-30 times of the kettle, so the effective collision effect between molecules is better, and the reaction speed is greatly accelerated.
3、Good reaction selectivity and high yield
Especially for the reaction with many side reactions and low product yield, it is necessary to control the relatively favorable conditions of the main reaction and suppress the side reactions, so as to greatly improve the yield of the main reaction and reduce the amount of relatively excessive raw material input and the amount of "three wastes" generated accordingly.
4、High automaticity, good safety, smooth yield and quality
Since the microreactor reaction is carried out in a relatively confined and small space, the pressure is higher than that of kettle type (generally can withstand 2-20MPa), plus multi-point temperature, pressure, safety accessories and other auxiliary facilities, plus the microreactor memory liquid is 0.1-3% of that of kettle type (generally only 10 to several dozens of liters), especially for nitrification, diazotization reaction, oxidation and other dangerous processes where the products are easily decomposed, it has an absolute safety advantage over kettle type. Absolute safety advantage. In particular, continuous microinversion is more conducive to the self-control of DCS, the reaction is less affected by human factors, the yield and quality are stable, the process is safe, and the potential hazards are minimized.
Microreactors generally complete the reaction in 2-10 meters of flow channel, which is more efficient than ordinary pipeline reactors and reactors. At the same time, the microreactor can be regarded as similar to the flat push flow, the concentration and temperature of the material liquid in each section of the channel are uniform, as the fluid advances, the reaction conversion rate gradually increases, and the reaction can be terminated at a certain conversion rate.
5、more economical, waste reduction, lower operating costs
Less investment in equipment, high output, less floor space and less hazardous material usage are also its advantages. As the microreactor reaction is larger than the kettle reaction temperature range, many reactions that need to be frozen at low temperatures can be carried out at higher temperatures. At the same time, the refrigerant can be used in combination of cold and heat, such as alcohol-formaldehyde condensation, diazotization, easy decomposition reaction, etc. in the microreactor reaction does not need to freeze the reaction at low temperature, thus greatly saving the power and energy consumption. Meanwhile, the successful implementation of microreactor can reduce the dependence of professional chemical operators.
Are you still worried about these? ZSRM can provide the solution
Although the advantages of microreactors are numerous, but companies consider the impact of large investment in microreactors, small capacity and application inhibited, some dare not try to invest, do not agree with the factors may include.
• Successful microreactors, starting from pilot experiments, are synchronized to consider industrial scale-up schemes, and microinversion kits that cannot be scaled up without differences are not economically valuable.
• The structure is homogeneous, the focus is on small batch experiments, and there is no differentiated design for materials containing solid fluids, powders, suspensions, salts, precipitates, gases, and other materials with widely varying physical states. Since the working parameters of micro-inversion equipment are too standardized, they cannot cope with more types of chemical reactions.
• Phenomena such as cascading, clogging, and excessive reactor temperature variations are factors that must be considered for high-flow industrialized equipment. Insight into the proprietary phenomena found in packaged microinversion equipment is the key to microinversion technology, including true flow rate, temperature, pressure, viscosity, heat balance, pressure drop, etc.
• Promoters are too commercial, pursuing sales targets and selling equipment, and using units with insufficient resources to invest in microreactor technology. The technical support party does not provide pragmatic personnel who understand chemical mechanism, equipment design, practical experience in microreactor operation and chemical production to cooperate with customers in the whole process of small trial, pilot and large production support. The supporting materials such as feeding and automatic control components are incompatible or deviated too much, and the theoretical design and industrialization are far apart. Excessive reliance on external support directly leads to high equipment costs.
• Micro inverse equipment providers focus on selling equipment and not on handing over industrialized metrics, leading to low customer confidence in equipment inputs.
For these potential issues, Zhongshan Microreactor provides corresponding solutions.
Typical case: remote control of chemical industry with a production of 10000 tons/year
The following is a successful industrial case of an enterprise using the microreactor technology independently developed by Zhongshan Zhian Chemical Technology Co., Ltd. to achieve automatic and continuous production of alcohol aldehyde condensation and oxidation.
Zhongshan Zhian Chemical Technology Co., Ltd. independently developed a new microreactor of 20 L/min. It is a new microreactor, which integrates the central control DCS technology of Zhejiang University and can be applied to dozens of conventional reactions and dangerous units.
Picture of 10000 ton industrial micro reactor site
The Zhongshan microreactor MR device features:
The flow rate is larger (20-40 L / min), the corrosion resistance of the material is similar to that of C276, and the core microreactor can withstand the pressure above 20MPa and the reaction temperature up to 500 ℃.
Zhejiang central control DCS one-press remote interlocking control is adopted, the instantaneous accuracy of multi-pump material feeding ratio is more than 99%, and the reactor can control the temperature gradient in multiple zones.
The main body of MR reactor is fabricated by additive manufacturing, and it has a total weight of less than 50 kg and the reactor size is 30 cm long, 20 cm wide and 5 cm high. It is also equipped with 5 groups of explosion-proof servo automatic regulating flow low pulse metering pumps for feeding.
A set of microreactor facilities can replace the production capacity of 16 kettle reactors with a capacity of 3000 litres and is remotely controlled to eliminate potential safety hazards. The investment cost is almost the same as that of traditional equipment. Complete sets of equipment can provide 5-8 years of paid maintenance and upgrading. The equipment has brand-new functions. In addition to being unable to be used for equilibrium reaction, as long as it has stable feeding conditions and working pressure of 0.3 MPa-0.6 MPa, it can be applied to rapid reaction and medium speed reaction, including nitration, chlorination, diazotization, butyl lithium and other reactions. It can be applied to delicate chemical production such as medicine, pesticide, coating, dye and perfume, achieving an annual production capacity of 10000 tons.
