Design, Fabrication, and Performance of an Optimized Flow Reactor with Parallel Micropacked Beds

Herein, we build on the results of our previous studies and describe the design and fabrication of a hybrid glass/silicon flow reactor with 32 parallel packed beds using an eight-inch wafer process. Increasing throughput of the exothermic reaction requires sufficient heat removal for maintaining reasonable productivity as well as for safe operation. In this work, a glass/silicon combination was chosen as reactor materials. We predicted the heat dissipation effect of the bonding of a silicon substrate to the glass microreactor, which was validated by the reaction experiment monitored by IR thermography. The reactor withstood pressures of up to 13 MPa, which ensures safe reactor operation in spite of the brittleness of materials (silicon and glass) used. It was designed to serve for the direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide (10 wt %) with 0.5 kg/h productivity per single reactor, and its parallel operation was demonstrated. Here we can show that the reactor is well suited for the safe and efficient operation of hazardous processes and their upscaling.