Characterization of mixing performance in a microreactor and its application to the synthesis of porous coordination polymer particles

摘要

Here we quantitatively evaluated the mixing performance of a tailor-made microreactor with central-collision type through the iodide/iodate chemical test reaction, and applied the microreactor to the synthesis of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8), which is a subclass of porous coordination polymers (PCPs) or metal organic frameworks (MOFs). The chemical test reaction demonstrated excellent mixing performance of the microreactor with a characteristic mixing time shorter than 1 ms, which is approximately 100 times faster than those of a batch reactor and a millimeter-sized Y-shaped mixer. Taking advantage of the rapid and uniform mixing, the microreactor successfully produced ZIF-8 particles with high reproducibility by simply mixing aqueous solutions of zinc nitrate and 2-methylimidazole. The synthesis at room temperature resulted in ZIF-8 particles with chamfered cube shape, while a lower temperature of 5 degrees C produced raspberry-type spherical particles. We confirmed that prepared ZIF-8 particles have BET surface area of similar to 1500 m(2)/g and exhibit the gate adsorption behavior caused by the structural transition of the ZIF-8 framework. (C) 2017 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. and The Society of Powder Technology Japan.