Safety-oriented on-line monitoring of Grignard reactions

Grignard reagents are of vital importance as intermediate products of numerous organic syntheses in the fine-chemical and pharmaceutical industry. They are commonly prepared by reactions between organic halides and magnesium. These so-called Grignard reactions possess considerable hazard potentials due to the spontaneous heat release during the strongly exothermic initiation stage and the high reactivity of the Grignard compounds. From process safety point of view, it is of vital importance to establish industrially applicable methods for an objective real-time detection of the reaction start-up and for educt accumulations in the reaction mixture of the stirred tank reactor during the semi-batch process.
To avoid the use of fragile and expensive on-line analytics, a balance-based on-line monitoring approach for Grignard processes was developed and tested. By solving a set of energy/ mass balances in real-time, concentration profiles of reactants and products can be calculated based on process signals, substance data and plant parameters. Instead of operating under reflux conditions which are commonly used to control the spontaneous exothermic initiation of Grignard reactions, a pressurised vessel process regime is preferred when the on-line monitoring method is applied. In such a way, the accuracy of the calculation can be considerably increased.
Additionally, the approach provides an estimation of the hazard potential due to the reactivity of the organic halide accumulated in the reaction mixture. Assuming an adiabatic behaviour as the worst case, the Maximum Temperature of the Synthesis Reaction (MTSR) and the related pressure in the case of a runaway can be estimated as time-dependent functions and compared with pre-defined thresholds. Furthermore, these safety-relevant parameters enable the optimisation of the process regime. Thus, the reaction can be carried out as a non-stop semi-batch process to increase the space-time yield.
The real-time estimation of safety-relevant parameters, like MTSR courses and corresponding maximum reactor pressure profiles, enables application of advanced control strategies up to the point of a safety-oriented fully automatic control of Grignard reactions.