[rahul]

hi everybody,
i am currentley using sodium dichromate as an oxidizing agent in my reaction. the process produces tremendous amount of waste ( chromium rich).
which other oxidizing agents can b good alternatives for dichromate?
does anyone have experience in oxidation using pure oxygen? (which i guess wii b a good alternative as it wont produce any solid waste)
appreciate your help,
rahul

[eugenedakin]

Hello rahul,

There are many oxidating agents which may/not work.  What is the reaction that you are asking about?

Sincerely,

Eugene

[Ψ×Ψ]

Most (singlet) "oxygen-only" oxidations that I'm aware of are photochemical (using a bit of dye as a photosensitizer) and thus probably not the best choice for large scale processes.  Of course, there are exceptions...it would be really helpful to know what you're trying to oxidise first.

[tripton]

Hi, Oxygen oxidation is very clean system. The big disadvantage is that sometimes is not enough because the oxidation power of oxygen is lower than other chemicals. The oxygen alone is used commonly with easy oxidable compounds. One option to increase the oxidation capability is to add some catalyzer. There are a lot of catalyzers developed and you must try to look for some one designed for your reaction (or something similar). A key point to install an oxygenation system is how you will distribute the bubbles in the reactor to improve the reaction surface (I gest your reaction is in liquid phase).
I´m researching about ozone oxidation and ozone combined with other things. Even is more expensive than the oxygen (the main cost in large scale is the electrical power supply to turn O2 into O3 with a spark), it is very usefull because the oxidation power is very high. The advantage is that you can obtain ozone from I´m trying to develop a method to increase a little bit more this oxidation power in order to use ozone to destroy very stable compounds.
Of course, other traditional oxidation technique is with chlorine solutions (sodium hipochlorithe or just chlorine dissolved in water). It is very cheap. It isn´t an environmentally friendly option because if you have organic matter you may create organochlorinated compounds, but perhaps is better than chromium wastes. You must evaluate it.

I´m very interested in this topic so you can ask me about.

Sincerely,

Sergio

[Donaldson Tan]

A lot of aerobic processes are limited by the mass transfer rate of oxygen from the gas phase to liquid phase. Using a slurry reactor might work out for you, but there is a possibility of using a nano-membrane reactor which has documented evidence of outperforming convention slurry reactors by at least 50% in terms of oxidation.