Reaction Engineering for Continuous Production of Silver Nanoparticles

A scalable process for the production of silver nanoparticles that allows for complete conversion of the limiting reactant is analyzed in detail. The kinetics of silver nanoparticle synthesis using citrate reduction are investigated and used for development of a reaction engineering model to facilitate the reactor design. The effect of temperature, pH, concentration and mixing (axial dispersion) on the rates of nucleation and growth are analyzed quantitatively. An approach that considers reaction kinetics coupled with quality of dispersion is developed for reactor design as well as selection of reactor configurations for the synthesis of specific particle sizes. The developed approach has been applied for continuous production of 10-L suspension silver nanoparticles with very narrow particle size distribution.