Safe Use of Hazardous Chemicals in Flow

MT Rahman¹, T Wirth²

• ¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK
• ² School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Flow chemistry has evolved into an excellent toolkit for handling challenging chemical transformations during the past decade. Highly exothermic and kinetically fast reactions are difficult to handle even on a small scale, whereas any scale-up poses significant risks when conventional reactors are considered. Flow chemistry enables exquisite control over mixing sequences, reaction time and quenching that ultimately paves the way for the fine-tuning of chemical reactivity in ‘space and time’. This chapter describes recent advances of flow chemistry in controlling and even discovering new reactivities of highly hazardous chemical species and unstable intermediates. This chapter compiles intriguing recent examples manifesting the power of flow chemistry to perform commonly known‚ cryogenic reactions at or near room temperature, safe-handling and in situ production of hazardous or toxic reagents for chemical transformations that are generally considered unsafe in conventional reactors.

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