A limited understanding pertaining to the details of a reaction mechanism oftentimes results in sub-optimal process design. We present an interesting case where the comprehensive investigation of reaction kinetics and thoughtful design of experiments was helpful in identifying a much broader array of reaction steps constituting the overall reaction mechanism than could be envisaged a priori.
Process optimization based on the identified reaction kinetics that not only eliminated one processing step, but also resulted in significant reduction in reagent usage and overall cycle time is then presented.
