Flow multiphasic catalysis with polymeric nanoreactors – FlowNanoCat

The increase of societal concern about our planet future led to the 12 principles of Green Chemistry. In this global scheme, catalysis plays a central role for a more sustainable chemical industry. Although heterogeneous catalysis is largely implemented in industry, homogeneous catalysis remains highly attractive in terms of efficiency (activity and selectivity), particularly for pharmaceutical or fine chemical industry, but suffers from more problematic expensive catalyst recovery and recycling. Amongst envisaged solutions, the most attractive approach is the biphasic strategy, with catalyst confinement in a different fluid phase than the reagents and products, because of its easy recovery by efficient and cost less decantation. In that case, water is the solvent of choice and micellar catalysis can be a very good solution. We have recently proposed an original solution that makes use of well-defined covalent micelles, namely core-shell “nanoreactors” dispersed in water. They are made of a hydrophilic shell (water confinement), and a hydrophobic core bearing covalently grafted catalyst.

The first objective of this project is to optimize the structure of the nanoreactors to enable aqueous biphasic heterogenization of a large scope of catalytic reactions thanks to carefully engineered polymeric core and shell to introduce efficient catalysts. The second objective is to transfer this catalytic tool from a batch to a flow process, opening an easier way to industrial implementation. Recent works showed how critical is multiphase flow structuration in microreactors for achieving high yields and selectivity.

The final purpose is to engineer an unprecedent synthetic tool for chemists, allowing to implement a large scope of homogeneous reactions under continuous-flow conditions. This is a major challenge, at the crossroad of molecular chemistry, polymer chemistry and process engineering, which are the expertise of the three partners involved in the project.