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Continuous Catalytic Reaction

As one of the largest chemical and petrochemical companies in Korea, SK Innovation (formerly SK Energy) which is branched off from SK Holdings has been very active in catalysis R&D for over two decades. SK CMS closely cooperaties with SK Innovation in catalysis technology development for use in contract manufacturing business(CMS).
Our capabilities include the design, preparation, screening, scale-up and characterization of specific catalysts for specific chemical transformations.
This experience in continuous catalytic processing is being directed towards developing highly competitive routes to certain fine chemicals and pharmaceutical intermediates.
The benefits we are seeing over traditional batch processing include :

Substantial Cost Saving (Saving on solvents, catalyst, work-up)

Safety

Higher Pressure Handling

Higher Productivity

Product Consistency

Higher Selectivity, Purity (Short residence time)

More Predictable Scale-Up

Extended Catalyst Life

Continuous Monitoring of Variables

Catalysts are usually custom made and regenerated in house. We have a very large range of micro reactors, bench scale, pilot, and commercial catalytic reactors for the evaluation of customer inquiries.

SK’s Facilities for High Pressure Hydrogenation

SK CMS now has world-class capabilities for the evaluation, scale-up, manufacturing fine chemicals and pharmaceutical intermediates by High Pressure Hydrogenation.
In several cases the use of very high pressure (eg. 200 Bar) has shown stepwise improvement in cost and quality compared to conventional reduction using hydride reagents or low pressure hydrogenation.
The use of continuous heterogeneous reduction in fixed beds has resulted in to dramatic improvement of yield and work up procedures. Since various size of reactors are available, it provide the high flexibilities in quantity (grams to multi tons) and time.
The range of facilities now available for evaluation of customer enquires includes :

High Pressure Hydrogenation

	Catalyst Volume	Number of Units	Pressure handling (atm, bar)	Temperature
Micro reactors	1-5m	9	100	650 °C
Micro reactors	1-5ml	2	250	650 °C
Bench scale	30-300ml	9	100	650 °C
Bench scale	30-300ml	2	250	650 °C
Pilot Scale	20L	1	200	400 °C
Commercial	150L	2	130	400 °C
Commercial	300L	2	300	380 °C

At very high pressures with right catalyst, Carboxylic acid and ester can be reduced to alcohol.

Hydrogenation with high pressure : (S)-3-Hydroxy-γ-butyrolactone

ALL CONTINUOUS PROCESSES

Esterification

Extraction

Neutralization

Lactonization

Purification by Distillation

Hydrogenation with high pressure: DHIQ

Very High Chemical and Stereochemical Selectivity

Excellent Yield

Moderate catalyst life

High Productivity (120L: 100MT/year)

Dehydrogenation with high temperature

Continuous Dehydrogenation (Fixed bed reactor, 600℃/-0.5 atm)

Dehydrogenation with high temperature : Aromatization

Better reaction yield, Longer catalyst life

Cyclization of (S)-3-Hydroxy THF

Dehydration can be achieved in mild conditions using acid resin tube reactors, which requires significantly lower temperature, compared to conventional batch reactions. Because of mild conditions, racemization can be minimized.

Other reactions : SK’s challenges

Suzuki reaction, CO insertion

Scale-up of Continuous Catalytic Reaction