Isothermal Reactor for Continuous Flow Microwave-Assisted Chemical Reaction*

An isothermal reactor in which reaction solutions can be controlled at constant temperature under constant microwave irradiation was developed. This is useful for investigating microwave effects on chemical reactions that are not observed under conventional heating conditions. We devised a structure in which a heat-transfer medium with a low dielectric loss factor, which hardly absorbs any microwaves, flowed outside a spiral reaction tube and designed the basic structure of the reactor using electromagnetic simulation to optimize the energy absorption rate. The conditions for increasing the temperature controlling ability of the reactor were also investigated theoretically and experimentally by taking into consideration the influences of three elements: the velocity of the internal fluid, the material for the tube, and the velocity of the external fluid. The velocity of the external fluid had the greatest influence on temperature controlling ability and the material for the tube had the least influence under the experimental conditions. The overall heat transfer coefficient was about 3.9×10 W/(m·K) when water flowed through the quartz reaction tube at 7.1 mm/s and the external fluid flowed outside the tube at 44 mm/s. We also tested and confirmed that the temperature of water used as internal fluid could be controlled to within ±1.5 K at 309.3 K when microwaves at 26 W were irradiated into the reactor, whereas the temperature of water was over 373 K and boiled without the heat-transfer medium flowing outside the reaction tube using a conventional method of microwave heating. In addition, we investigated microwave effects on Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction using the developed isothermal reactor and we confirmed that the temperatures were controlled well in the reactor. The yields obtained by microwave heating were almost the same as that obtained by oil-bath heating.