The preparation and reaction of enolates within micro reactors

Over the past 5 years, interest in the miniaturisation of chemical synthesis has grown rapidly, however in order to facilitate transfer of the technology from its current position as a research tool to industrial applications, a core understanding of the challenges associated with transferring reactions from the macro to the micro domain is required. This paper therefore aims to broach this problem by investigating the application of micro reactors to a range of commonly employed synthetic reactions including acylation, aldol, alkylation, 1,4-conjugate addition (Michael addition) and the Knoevenagel condensation. Comparison of the results obtained with traditional batch techniques enable us to highlight some of the advantages associated with micro reaction technology.