Continuous catalytic reactions in supercritical fluids

Recent heightened awareness of the environmental impacts associated with a large proportion of established chemical processes has led to the application of considerable pressures on the chemical industry, both regulatory and consumer driven, to adopt a cleaner and greener approach to manufacture. The economies of scale and associated efficiencies of continuous processes have long been a contributing factor in the design and efficient running of many large-scale industrial plants. When successfully combined with a versatile and environmentally benign solvent system such as supercritical fluids (SCFs), continuous processing can be seen to be suitable for a wide variety of reactions (hydrogenation, hydroformylation, alkylation, etc.) which can be conducted efficiently in an environmentally sensitive way. This review article aims to show the reader how the marriage of these two technologies is helping chemistry to achieve this goal. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.