With small reactors, Flowid makes the chemical industry safer.

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Posted by Olga Koltsova | Jul 29, 2019

From test tube to Erlenmeyer flask to reactor vessel, in chemistry it always comes down to the same principle of mixtures, allowing a chemical reaction to take place. Preferably in the safest way possible. The Eindhoven-based company Flowid has specialized in reactor vessels as small as a coffee cup, which can process large quantities of chemicals through a continuous flow system.
It is logical that a lot of time and energy is invested in the development of reactor vessels. In the chemical industry, the reactor is the most important type of equipment. Most chemical reactions in chemical plants are carried out in batch-type reactors with large capacities (up to 15,000 liters). In these reactors, all materials are loaded into the reactor before the reaction can take place. In addition to these batch reactors, there are also continuous reactors: in these reactors, materials flow continuously into the reactor and emerge as a continuous product stream. Existing continuous reactors (or flow reactors) are smaller than batch reactors. However, they are still designed for large-scale processes.
Chemical reactor the size of a coffee cup
The Eindhoven-based company Flowid, located at Strijp-T, develops flow reactors in much smaller dimensions than the other available reactors on the market. "The volume of our reactors is as large as a coffee cup," says Wouter Stam, the founder and director of Flowid. "You continuously run chemical reagents through this small tank. The smaller volume also means that risks decrease compared to a batch-type reactor. In the continuous reactors we sell, the volume of hazardous substances is small, so you have more control over your chemistry and much better safety conditions than with conventional systems," says Stam.
Pharmaceutical or specialized chemical producers would benefit the most from the small continuous reactors, says Wouter Stam. He adds that Flowid's solutions are versatile enough to be applied in any other industry where chemical processes are used.
Flow reactors are not the reactors that produce the final products. They are typically used to produce intermediates that undergo further processing in the pharmaceutical industry or in the production of specialty chemicals. "We build systems consisting of our reactors and other types of flow reactors. They are designed for working with non-standard or hazardous chemicals – in such cases, it makes sense to use a continuous reactor."
Innovative power reactors
The director of Flowid says that the main feature of the reactor developed by the company is that they offer the ability to control mixing independently of the flow. This is not possible in standard flow reactors. In those, better mixing is achieved by pumping the reagents faster. "SpinPro allows us to work with multiphase chemistry: solvent-water, or solvent-water-gas. If you have a precipitation reaction (which involves the formation of an insoluble product when two solutions are mixed), you can also do this. This is what makes Flowid reactors unique. However, all continuous reactors are innovative compared to standard batch systems. It should be noted that regular systems are still good for large volumes."
Flowid's plans for the future involve further reselling continuous solutions. "We do two types of work: we help our customers transition from the laboratory to the factory and then switch from batch to flow. To achieve this, we conduct tests in the customer's facilities as well as in our own facilities. Subsequently, we build a system that enables the transfer of work from the laboratory to the factory. It can consist entirely of Flowid solutions, but also of other types of continuous reactors. We do not only focus on selling our reactors - we seek the optimal solutions for the customers and engineer the system to meet their needs," says the director of Flowid.

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