Cleaner Chemical Processes

The chemical reactions currently used in the fine chemicals and pharmaceutical industries often involve toxic reagents which can generate large amounts of waste. Photochemical and electrochemical reactions can, in principle, eliminate the need for some of these reagents and can lead to high selectivity. This PhD project will exploit newly developed reactors for photochemistry and catalysis to demonstrate how these techniques can be applied in practice to continuous (flow) processes. The work will particularly focus on using spectroscopy to detect intermediates and probe reaction mechanisms.