Automated kinetics measurement for homogeneous photocatalytic reactions in continuous microflow

Photocatalytic reactions, achieving chemical synthesis in a more sustainable manner than thermal reactions, have been demonstrated to become more efficient, greener and easier to scale up when combined with continuous microflow technology. Nevertheless, the report on the kinetics measurement for photocatalytic reactions in continuous microflow, especially in a fully automated way, is very rare. In this work, two challenging parameters, i.e., the reaction order with respect to oxygen (2.48) and photoreaction activation energy (-16.83 kJ/mol) of the photocatalytic oxidation of 9,10-diphenylanthracene, were acquired in an automated continuous flow platform using the Steady-state Method. Moreover, the Ramping Method was also successfully implemented in the automated continuous flow photoreaction platform, exhibiting a predictive accuracy of 4.42%, with 64.3% less time and 58.0% less material consumption than the Steady-state Method. And it was found that the improvement in the residence time distribution of the microreactor could improve the accuracy of the Ramping Method. The automated continuous flow process developed in this work could offer an efficient and accurate way to attain the reaction kinetics information for homogeneous photocatalytic reactions.