Epoxidation of trans-stilbene in a microfluidic plasma reactor

Novel organic synthesis routes that circumvent the need for a catalyst and reduce unwanted by-products are highly sought by industry. A novel microfluidic plasma reactor generates dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) in vicinity of gas-liquid interface facilitate chemical reaction at microbubbles has been used trans-stilbene epoxidation. Three different operating strategies were implemented to optimise transfer species selectivity: single pass, multi-pass continuous recirculation. The effect initial concentration, oxygen content feed gas mixture time on epoxide formation was studied reaction. optimum conditions found be short bubble-liquid contact times (~2 s) with frequent exposure freshly generated containing reactive liquid recirculation, under these overall yield ~94% an selectivity 10:1.