TUNING FLUID SOLVENTS FOR CHEMICAL-REACTIONS

Remarkable opportunities exist for the fruitful exploitation of the sp ecial properties of supercritical and nearcritical fluids as solvents for chemical reactions. Solution properties may be tuned, with thermod ynamic conditions or cosolvents, to modify rates, yields, and selectiv ities, and supercritical fluids offer greatly enhanced mass transfer f or heterogeneous reactions. Also, both supercritical fluids and nearcr itical water can often replace environmentally undesirable solvents or catalysts, or avoid undesirable byproducts. Furthermore, rational des ign of solvent systems can also modify reactions to facilitate process separations. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.