Flow chemistry is a promising route to improve the pharmaceutical, fine and specialty chemical industry competitiveness, enabling more efficient, safer and cleaner chemical routes. However, the challenge is to provide equipment for all parts of the development and production chain and thereby making technology transfer easy thus delivering the full advantage of continuous production.

The Swedish engineering company, Alfa Laval has now developed such a solution. The ART® LabPlate™ is now making the range of plate reactors complete, from the development work in the laboratory to fullscale production.

To be able to convert chemistry from batch to continuous, it needs to be easy to test equipment and to develop processes. With the ART LabPlate, Alfa Laval enables chemist to use the same type of equipment in the lab as is available for production.

The Alfa Laval Plate Reactor is a continuous reactor range with major benefits in economy, production safety and environmental impact. Compared to classic stirredtank reactors it allows faster scale-up, better control of the reaction and improved yield.

How it works

The ART LabPlate combines the properties of a tube reactor with those of a plate heat exchanger. It contains of two flow-directing reactor plates that are controlled by heat transfer plates, held together by pressure plates to create a compact reactor unit. Ports along the reaction channel provide access to the reaction mixture for measurement, sampling and reactant addition. The plate reactor can be

disassembled and reassembled quickly allowing easy cleaning.

The mechanical design of the reactor allows for reaction at elevated temperatures and pressures. The LabPlate has flow capacity of 2-40 ml/min, which suits chemistry development well. It enables chemists to get a good understanding of the flow chemistry while still not consuming too much valuable raw material. The advantages There are several advantages with this technology. The high heat transfer characteristics of a plate heat exchanger are combined with efficient mixing,

producing reliable reaction control in one unit. This allows users to improve existing

processes and products.

By starting in the LabPlate to confirm the feasibility of flow chemistry, you know you have a fully developed product range that can take you all the way to commercial production. This means that the technology transfer between the chemists and engineers is simplified which will save time and money.

Alfa Laval Reactor Technology

The LabPlate is a robust and reliable unit. Even though it is considered for laboratory work, it is based on Alfa Laval extensive experience in reliable production equipment. In addition to a robust design, the reaction volume is very small which makes it a safe proposition. It is easy to open for cleaning and

inspection and to maintain thus reducing the downtime.

A brief history re-cap of reactor technology

The new reactor technology has its origin in Alfa Laval’s long experience in heat and mass transfer. In the 1930’s Alfa Laval pioneered plate heat exchanger development. Until the late 1940’s the technology was used primarily for pasteurizing milk and beer. However, in the early 1950’s Alfa Laval had a

breakthrough with plate heat exchangers for the process industry.

The past 40 years of development have provided different industries with new process solutions for cooling and heating. The major breakthroughs in technology have been made on the material side and in methods of production and product design.

The basics of the ART LabPlate originate from numerous heat exchanger developments. The Alfa Laval ART Plate Reactor range was developed together with leading European universities and prototypes have undergone extensive testing at a number of customers, including Astra Zeneca (Sweden), DSM (Netherlands) and Perstorp AB (Sweden).

As a start for the commercial launch, the Alfa Laval plate reactor technology and the ART® reactor range were presented to the international media at the DECHEMA headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in November 2007. Later the same month, Alfa Laval launched the unique reactor technology and reactor range in selected European countries.

During 2008, the first commercial products were supplied to customers within the pharmaceutical, fine and specialty chemicals industries. In 2009, Alfa Laval commercially launched the ART reactor technology in USA and is continuing to launch the reactor technology and range in selected countries in the world. In May 2009, Alfa Laval won the process innovation reward for the largest-sized

plate reactor in the product portfolio, the ART PR49, at ACHEMA 2009 event in Frankfurt, Germany.