Continuous Flow Photo-oxidations Using Supported Photocatalysts on Silica
Vincent Blanchard, Zakariae Asbai, Kévin Cottet, Guillaume Boissonnat, Marc Port, Zacharias Amara
Abstract
The immobilization of soluble photocatalysts, or photosensitizers, has the potential to reduce the environmental footprint as well as the costs associated with visible-light photochemical processes. We report here on the straightforward preparation of photocatalysts non-covalently supported on silica using electrostatic interactions and compare the activities of these new photocatalytic systems in the photo-oxidation of 1,5-dihydroxynaphthalene to juglone in batch and in a fixed-bed flow reactor. This study demonstrates that simple immobilization strategies can produce stable heterogeneous photocatalysts and provide promising processing options with an up to 24-fold improvement in productivity in flow relative to batch.