On September 27th, 2005, six months after signing a
co-operation agreement, the test runs of a microstructured reactor
plant for nitroglycerine production have been successfully completed
at Xi'an Chemical Industrial Group (HAC) in China. Under supervision
of Prof. Dr. Holger Loewe, Director R&D of the Institut fuer
Mikrotechnik Mainz GmbH (IMM), Germany, a team of engineers and
chemists around Dr. Bernd Werner designed and constructed a continuous
flow nitroglycerine plant. The plant was established on-site in the
framework of a long term co-operation agreement to explore possible
applications for the production of fine chemicals, specialties and
commodities with microreaction technology.
This new erected plant allows to produce
nitroglycerine continuously with a throughput of approximately 15 kg
per hour. The manufactured nitroglycerine will exclusively be used as
a drug for acute cardiac infarction. Therefore, the product must be
made under GMP conditions and the quality of the product has to
fulfill highest standards. The microstructured reactor plant consists
essentially of three main parts: the mixing of sulfuric acid with
nitric acid, both highly concentrated fuming liquids, the reactor and
the phase separation, washing and purification devices. On demand,
glycerine and the acid mixture are fed separately into a
microstructured reactor where mixing occurs within milliseconds. The
high surface to volume ratio of these new type of reactors ensures an
immediate transfer of heat released by the reaction. An increased
safety compared to conventional processing is achieved by the small
volume hold-up in the microstructured reactor. In summary, higher
yields, better product quality, increased safety and a reduction of
environmental hazards are the main advantages by applying
microstructured reactors not only for this type of chemical reactions.
Having the test runs of the nitroglycerine plant
completed successfully after final inspection and acceptance by HAC it
was decided to extend co-operation with IMM in terms of investigating
reactions suitable for processing in microstructured reactors.
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