Project Summary


The overall goal of the NEPUMUC project is to make the benefits of microreaction technology available for industrial purposes, in particular nitration chemistry.
Therefore, the project partners will jointly develop, test and evaluate a new microreaction process as a prototype to demonstrate that even under industrial requirements microreaction technology can be made available in a flexible and multi-purpose manner.
The project will address these different technical challenges by new and highly innovative methods and technologies. For the first time, simulation and modelling tools will be consequently applied for the design of both the entire nitration process and its core component, the microfluidic reaction unit. This will be a totally new approach to overcome the problems of achieving sufficient throughput although microfluidic structures are used.

To enable a robust, stable and safe processing under high industrial requirements, new microfluidic sensors will be developed and adapted to the microreaction units. These sensors will allow an accurate process monitoring and process control in the immediate vicinity of the most important part of the process: the microreactor. For the first time, microfluidic sensors will become an integral part of an industrial microreaction process.

Finally, the development of an appropriate automation system that interacts accurately with both microfluidic sensors and macroscopic actuators (pumps, heating/cooling devices ) will make microreaction technology processable like conventional chemical processes.
An evaluation procedure will be an integral part of the entire project. The evaluation will clearly describe the technical and economic benefits and potential limitations of the microreaction process. Besides process intensification and process flexibility further significant benefits will be expected and evaluated concerning environmental and safety aspects.