The Chapman rearrangement in a continuous-flow microreactor

Abstract

The Chapman rearrangement is of practical significance in pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries. It is a high temperature reaction with an exothermic nature in numerous cases. The conventional batch-wise synthesis is limited by its operational complexities, temperature control difficulties and scale-up hurdles. In this work, a microreactor-based continuous-flow approach was developed to perform the rearrangement in a highly controlled and safer manner. High conversions were obtained within short residence times (≤20 minutes). The detailed kinetics of this reaction, using 2,6-dichloro-phenyl N-phenyl benzimidate and 2-carbomethoxy-phenyl N-phenyl benzimidate as the representative reactants, was explored at varying temperatures to understand the intensified reaction behavior, and was modelled based on the obtained experimental data. The continuous process was scaled up to a 16-fold larger reactor volume by increasing the diameter of the microreactor while maintaining the residence time without further optimization. A very slight variation was observed in the conversion for the larger-sized flow system. Upscaling the batch reaction to a 10 times larger volume, by contrast, resulted in a dramatic decrease in the conversion. The simplicity of scaling up continuous-flow system was clearly demonstrated. A CFD model coupled with the obtained rearrangement kinetics was developed and well validated against the experimental data, which provided a robust platform for guiding the relevant process design and optimization of the continuous-flow processes. The results presented shed new light on the developments and applications of continuous-flow method for the classical Chapman rearrangement that require harsh high temperatures.