Continuous flow fluorination facilitated by KF assisted by water: From batch to continuous flow

Continuous fluorination presents a promising technology due to its potential for simple operation, process safety, and scale-up capabilities. However, when the metal fluoride was used as a fluorine source, the continuous fluorination process was hampered by solubility problem. In this work, we developed a water-assisted continuous flow operation for nucleophilic fluorination facilitated by KF. The effects of water on solubilization and activation step were revealed by the density functional theory (DFT) study. The continuous fluorination was successfully carried out in the tubular reactor, and the desired yield was obtained. The mass transfer performance in the tubular reactor was revealed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Besides, the kinetic study of the reaction in flow was also presented. Furthermore, the comparison with other two reported methods revealed the superiority of the continuous fluorination.