A Reactor System Using Electrospray in the Liquid Phase and Its Application in Selective Cyclosiloxane Synthesis

• Published in: Industrial & engineering chemistry research Vol. 56; no. 16; pp. 4878 - 4882
• Main Authors: Ido, Yohei, Kobara, Hitomi, Tominaga, Ken-ichi, Wakisaka, Akihiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 26.04.2017
• ISSN: 0888-5885; 1520-5045
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.6b04774

Electrospraying is an electrochemical technique in which fine droplets are generated in the balance of electrostatic repulsion and surface tension. In this paper, we applied electrospray in the liquid phase in a new reactor system in which positively and negatively charged fine droplets collided with each other between two electrospray nozzles submerged in a solvent. When the hydrolysis of alkylchlorosilanes was carried out using this reactor, not only did the reaction rates increase, but also, the product distribution changed: the kinetically favored cyclotrimer was predominantly formed over the thermodynamically favored cyclotetramer. The yield of cyclotrimer increased with an increase in the voltage between the needles. Since the droplet size decreases with an increase in the applied voltage, the result suggests that the formed cyclotrimer could diffuse into the solvent before it was converted to the thermodynamically favored cyclotetramer.