Supercritical Fluids: Reactions, Materials & Applications

摘要

A number of important processes utilizing supercritical fluids have been either implemented or are emerging for extractions, separations and a wide range of cleaning applications. Supercritical fluids can be reasonable solvents yet share many of the advantages of gases including miscibility with other gases (i.e. hydrogen and oxygen), low viscosities and high diffusivities. Carbon dioxide has the further advantages of being nontoxic, nonflammable, inexpensive and currently unregulated. The use of compressed gases, either as liquids or supercritical fluids, as reaction media offers the opportunity to replace conventional hazardous solvents and also to optimize and potentially control the effect of solvent on chemical and material processing. The last several years has seen a significant growth in advances in chemical synthesis, catalytic transformations and materials synthesis and processing. The authors report on results from an exploratory program at Los Alamos National Laboratory aimed at investigating the use of dense phase fluids, particularly carbon dioxide, as reaction media for homogeneous, heterogeneous and phase-separable catalytic reactions in an effort to develop new, environmentally-friendly methods for chemical synthesis and processing. This approach offers the possibility of opening up substantially different chemical pathways, increasing selectivity at higher reaction rates, facilitating downstream separations and mitigating the need for hazardous solvents. Developing and understanding chemical and catalytic transformations in carbon dioxide could lead to greener chemistry at three levels: (1) Solvent replacement; (2) Better chemistry (e.g. higher reactivity, selectivity, less energy consumption); and (3) New chemistry (e.g. novel separations, use of COP(sub 2) as a C-1 source).