Flash C-H Chlorination of Ethylene Carbonate Using a New Photoflow Setup

We report flash C-H chlorination of ethylene carbonate, which gives chloroethylene carbonate, a precursor to ethylene carbonate. A novel photoflow setup designed for a gas-liquid biphasic reaction turned out to be useful for the direct use of chlorine gas in flow. The setup employed sloped channels so as to make the liquid phase thinner, ensuring high surface to volume ratio. When ethylene carbonate was introduced to the reactor, the residence time was measured to be 15 or 30 sec, depending on the slope of the reactor to be 15 or 5 °C, respectively. Such short time exposition sufficed the photo C-H chlorination. The partial irradiation of the flow channels sufficed for the C-H chlorination, which is consistent with the requirement of photoirradiation for the purpose of radical initiation. We also found that the contaminated water negatively influenced the performance of C-H chlorination. The 100% selectivity for single chlorination required the low conversion of ethylene carbonate such as 9%, which was controlled by limited introduction of chlorine gas. At a higher conversion of ethylene carbonate such as 63%, the selectivity for mono-chlorinated ethylene carbonate over di-chlorinated ethylene carbonate was 86%. We found that the contaminated water negatively influenced the performance of the C-H chlorination.