The maison europeenne des procedes innovants (MEPI),an example of piloting and industrial demonstration facility for the green process engineering

Abstract. Economical, energy savings and environmental challenges require an actual technological breakthrough in process engineering, aiming with productivity, product quality, safety and reliability objectives. This explains the present growth of interest in innovative technologies (intensified devices for reaction, mixing and separation) and methods (multifunctionality, hybrid separation, batch to continuous methodology, new media …), the whole being recognized as Process Intensification. Up to now, a few of innovations has been successfully industrialized, probably due to the lack of experience and retrofitting in front of a breakthrough that always represents a technical and financial risk. There is now clearly a need for industrial demonstrations of successful PI experiments avoiding the questions of confidentiality. Consequently, a piloting and demonstration facility has been created in Toulouse in order to accelerate the implementation of PI technology in industry and the development of the Green Process Engineering. The idea is to build a data bank of success stories. The principle of this industrial technical platform lies on the association of 3 types of partners: university, equipment providers and industrial end-users

Flow photochemistry: a meso-scale reactor for industrial applications

Developing flow photochemistry, especially at meso-scale where significant productivity is required, remains challenging. There is a need for innovative equipments generating highly controlled flow under light irradiation. In this work, a commercial solution, developed by Corning, is presented and studied by LGC and MEPI on an intramolecular (2+2) photo-cycloaddition. Detailed experimental and modelling analysis has been performed to emphasize the flow reactor behaviour and performances, and demonstrate its capability in producing up to 30g.h-1 of the desired molecule. Through this simple model reaction, the G1 photo-reactor is shown to be an efficient meso-scale reactor for industrial photo-applications development and production