Elv. Goetheer et al., Opportunities for process intensification using reverse micelles in liquidand supercritical carbon dioxide, CHEM ENG SC, 54(10), 1999, pp. 1589-1596
Liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide can be used as a replacer for organ
ic solvents, which potentially enables the development of clean processes.
A general disadvantage of CO2, however, is that it is a very poor solvent f
or high molecular weight or hydrophilic molecules. By using reverse micelle
s to overcome this problem, a wide variety of novel processes can be though
t of. In this review, it is shown that the use of micellar systems in super
critical CO2 leads to processes generating a minimum amount of waste and wi
th a low energy requirement. It is also shown that especially downstream pr
ocessing of biochemicals and polymerization reactions can benefit From this
technique, as the number of consecutive process steps can be reduced signi
ficantly. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.