Water as synthetic reaction medium: realising its green chemistry credential

该项目旨在提供支撑工具和设计原则，以支持在高价值化学品制造中使用水作为反应介质。长期以来，水一直被宣传为一种环境友好和安全的合成过程的“绿色”反应介质，这可以导致更可持续和更具成本效益的制造过程。然而，由于废水的有机污染、后续处理的成本以及净化阶段经常需要的有机溶剂等问题，水的绿色证书一直受到限制。水加速反应，即在水中比在有机溶剂中进行得更快的反应，其中有机反应物和产品形成疏水液滴，是潜在的改变游戏规则的高价值化学品制造。它们受益于更快的速度、更高的生产率，以及通过减少有机溶剂的使用而大大改善的绿色指标。它们目前的局限性是：(1)已知反应池有限；(2)缺乏适当的设备和工艺了解；这个项目将填补这些知识空白，并提供以下关键成果，通过与我们在化学工业领域的工业合作伙伴的讨论确定：(I)更广泛的合成有用的水加速反应，(Ii)支持水加速过程放大途径的多尺度间歇和流动反应器，(Iii)表征这种过程的标准化协议和扩大规模的基本过程理解，以及(Iv)简化工作/产品净化和水的回收，以真正提供绿色工艺。这些产出将对化学制造行业产生变革性的影响，通过更短的路线、减少有机废物以及化学和生物催化过程之间的方便对接，提供更低的成本和更好的质量控制过程。

This project aims to deliver the underpinning tools and design principles to support the use of water as a reaction media in High Value Chemical Manufacture. Water has long been promoted as an environmentally friendly and safe 'green' reaction media for synthetic processes which can lead to much more sustainable and cost effective manufacturing process. Nevertheless, the green credential of water has been limited due to issues related to organic contamination of the water waste stream, cost of subsequent treatment and the often required organic solvents at purification stage.Water-accelerated reactions, i.e. reactions which proceed faster in water than in organic solvents and wherein organic reactants and products form hydrophobic droplets, are potential game-changers High Value Chemical Manufacture. They benefit from accelerated rates, improved productivity and much improved green metrics through reduction in the use of organic solvents. Their current limitations are: (i) a limited pool of known reactions; (ii) lack of suitable equipment and process understanding; and (iii) insufficient understanding of acceleration effects which can guide discovery and process design.This project will address these knowledge gaps and deliver the following critical outputs, identified through discussion with our industrial partners in chemical industry sector: (i) a wider range of synthetically useful water-accelerated reactions, (ii) multi-scale batch and flow reactors to support the scale-up pathway for water-accelerated processes, (iii) standardised protocols for characterising such processes and basic process understanding for scaling up, and (iv) streamlined workup/product purification and recycling of water to truly deliver green processes. These outputs will have transformative impacts in the chemical manufacture industry, delivering lower cost and better quality controlled processes through shorter routes, reduced organic waste and facile interfacing between chemo- and biocatalytic processes.