A high pressure single-pass high-conversion electrochemical cell for intensification of organic electrosynthesis processes

The cell performance is discussed in terms of cell voltage, reactant conversion, material and current efficiency and finally selectivity in 4-MBDMA. The effect of inlet reagent concentration, pressure, flow-rate and temperature are investigated. Best performance is obtained with 0.5 M 4-MT at 5 bars and 45 °C: for a 90% conversion, selectivity and current efficiency attain, respectively, 92% and 85%. The high pressure, single-pass high-conversion cell exhibits in this case a space time yield 5-10 times higher than the current industrial process, with a significantly lower concentration of the supporting electrolyte.