The solution developed by Ellery Bann, Doug Camposano and Safiyya S. Shabazz was the winner in Penn's 1996 Molstad Award competition. Dimethylformamide is made from supercritical carbon dioxide, which serves as both the reactor medium and as one of the reactants. The other reactants are hydrogen and dimethylamine.
Formic acid is an intermediate product.
The laboratory batch reactor has provided curves of composition vs. time. The curves will be used to calculate reaction rate constants. These constants will be used to optimize the reactor system, be it a series of continuously mixed reactors or a continuous tubular reactor. Consider several alternatives for scaling up the laboratory reactor. Here the reaction is incomplete and the unreacted reactants must be recovered and recycled.