Direct Synthesis of Hydrogen Peroxide Using a Glass Fabricated Microreactor - Paralleled Packed Bed Operation

Chemical processes based on microfluidic devices have advantages over conventional reactor technologies on safe handling of potential risks of reaction overrun.  One of such examples is hydrogen oxygen combination reaction to produce hydrogen peroxide, which consists of not only gas phase (hydrogen and oxygen) but also liquid phase (water) and solid (catalyst), and  we had already demonstrated that microfluidic device is useful for handling the reaction even with under hydrogen oxygen mixture with explosive content, and that it also serves as an efficient reactor when the reactor design was optimized for the multiphase handling.  We are aiming parallel microfluidic device operation to increase productivity, by parallel operation of such microfluidic devices as well as increasing the capacity of each device.

We fabricated microfluidic devices with 4, 8, 16 and 32 parallel packed beds, and we went successful in operating them by installing proper fluid distribution structure, that is, pressure drop channels, to distribute the reaction fluids equally.  More paralleling effort will be presented on site by designing proper microfluidic devices as fluid distributors.