Micro Reactors, Flow Reactors and Continuous Flow Synthesis

Dr Paul Watts is a reader in organic chemistry at The University of Hull and since graduating from the University of Bristol, where he completed a PhD in bio-organic natural product synthesis, he has led the Micro Reactor Group at Hull. In this role, he has published 90 papers, and he regularly contributes to the field by way of invited book chapters, review articles, and keynote lecturers on the subject of micro reaction technology in organic synthesis. Dr Charlotte Wiles is the Chief Technology Officer at Chemtrix BV, and has been actively researching within the area of micro reaction technology for 10 years, starting with a PhD entitled Micro reactors in organic chemistry, which she obtained from The University of Hull in 2003. In the past decade, she has authored many scientific papers and review articles, recently co-authoring a book on the subject of micro reaction technology in organic synthesis. More recently, she has tailored her experience to the development and evaluation of commercially available continuous flow reactors, systems and peripheral equipment. This review article explains the advantages of micro reactors and flow reactors as tools for conducting organic synthesis and describes how the technology may be used in research and development as well as production. A selection of examples is taken from the literature to illustrate how micro reactors enables chemists to perform their reactions more efficiently than when using batch processes.