Reactive Chromatography: A Review of Process Technology

Chemical Industries are primarily intended for conversion of raw materials into desired products. It develops new products for human lives. The challenge for chemical companies is to cut their costs. The chemical industries have high rate of technological change. Chemical industries use separate processes for converting raw material into product. Now day’s the technology that is adopted is reactive separation. In this technology, the emphasis is given on combining separate units in one single unit. Advantageous of this technology is like reducing energy use, increase efficiency etc. Reactive separation uses different techniques like Reactive Chromatography, Reactive Distillation and Reactive Extraction, Reactive Membrane Separation, Reactive Crystallization. Out of this, Reactive chromatography is a attractive alternative since it employs differences in adsorption - desorption of chemical reagents on external solid phase, which can also act as catalyst. It is possible to obtain high purity of product from this process, also downstream purification is reduced or even eliminated. Fixed bed reactor or simulated bed reactors are mainly used for this purpose. Many researchers have studied reactive chromatography. This review is focused in development in reactive chromatography processes