Kemai Chemical Successfully Developing Accelerator Microchemical Continuous Flow Technology

◎ Si Jia

The so-called microreactor refers to a microreactor manufactured by precision machining technology with a characteristic size between 10 and 1000 microns. The “micro” of microreactor does not specifically refer to the small size of microreactor; nor does it mean that the output of microreactor product is small; rather, it means that the channel of process fluid is on micron level; the microreactor can contain thousands of microchannels, therefore it can also achieve high yields.

According to experts, micro-chemical technology has opened up a new era of high-efficiency fine chemicals in the 21st century. Completely different from the traditional intermittent tank production process, the micro-chemical reaction technology successfully solves the traditional process’s technical problems that explosion is easy to happen and reaction is not complete, and can significantly shorten reaction time and reduce volume of the reaction system.

Kemai Chemical Co., Ltd. is the first in China to successfully develop large-tonnage TBBS and CBS, two major varieties of microreaction technology. Its president Wang Shuhua has the most say. He said: “The greatest value of micro-reaction is to achieve the intrinsic safety of chemical production process. This is an upgrade, and a change in the traditional way of thinking.”

It is learned that since 2014, Kemai has explored various continuous flow synthesis processes, and finally determined the microchannel continuous process. After that, it cooperated with Changzhou University, and successfully developed TBBS and CBS varieties of microreaction continuous flow process technology through multiple small-scale trials and pilot tests.

The reporter saw in Kemai that the capacity of only one set of microreaction equipment can reach 5,000 tons/year, while its floor space is only 1/18 of the previous one. The application of microreaction not only brings about the increase of reaction speed and productivity, and the slimming of volume of reaction vessel, but more importantly, it changes the traditional images of heavy pollution, high energy consumption and poor safety in some links of chemical industry, realizes the safety, micromation and greening of chemical production process, and greatly improves the resources and energy utilization efficiency of chemical production. Wang Shuhua said: “The microreaction has a small floor space, low feed rate, fast reaction rate, less ‘three wastes’ by-products and high conversion rate. Microreaction industrialization production will be a disruptive project in the field of chemical synthesis, and it is a redefinition of traditional chemical production process.”