Interdigital Micromixer for Selective N-Monoalkylation of Anilines in a Microflow System

An interdigital micromixer was designed and used in the N-monoalkylation of anilines with alkyl halides. The optimization of the interdigital micromixer was conducted through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The mixing performance and flow field of this novel micromixer were investigated in detail. The introduction of the interdigital micromixer promoted the mass transfer between anilines and alkyl halides, affording the corresponding N-monoalkylated anilines with a selectivity of 93% and a yield of 89%. No other bases and catalysts were used in this process. The interdigital micromixer had 13% higher selectivity than that of the commercial Y-type micromixer and 30% higher selectivity than that of the batch method. Furthermore, the universality experiments of this N-monoalkylation process proved that the micromixer had a better broad applicability. All the findings reported provided useful references for the improvement of selectivity and yield of the chemical reaction in microflow systems.