Oxidation of cyclohexene in a simple capillary-microreactor

A simple glass capillary-microreactor for studying the epoxidation of cyclohexene is described in this paper. Reaction conditions were optimized to achieve high reaction yield. The microreactor is easy to fabricate, fast and easy way for reliable catalyst screening in studying homogeneous oxidation reactions. Four different catalysts (i.e. manganese(II) and copper(II) metal complexes of Schiff and reduced Schiff base ligands) were synthesized and used. The reaction products were monitored by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The reaction performance was compared with conventional (batch scale) reaction. In both cases, catalytic activities and the product yields were found to be relatively higher for the copper(II) complexes when compared with the conventional route.