Cutting-edge chemistry
Industrial nitroglycerin made fast and safe
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Structure of nitroglycerin
Did you
know?
Nitroglycerin is not only a
powerful explosive but
also a potent drug
(sometimes called
glyceryl trinitrate), widely
used for treating angina
and other heart problems.
Microreactors can be
used to produce explosive
materials much more
safely
8 | The Mole | September 2012
control the decomposition products. And in the event
of something going very wrong, the resulting explosion
would be much smaller.
The microreactor is a hand-sized clear polymer tile with
an internal channel that meanders across the plane.
The internal channel has two entrances but only one
exit – the reactants are brought together at the start and
then mixed as they move through the microreactor by
turbulence caused by a complex pattern of grooves and
ridges on the sides of the channel.
To scale up production, you simply add more
microreactors in parallel. A single microreactor
might be used to make 10–50 kg of
nitroglycerine per day. But the research
group in Pfinztal has experimented with
production at 2–3 tonnes per week by
‘numbering up’ the microreactors.
Since the invention of nitroglycerin in the mid-19th
century, people have been trying to find safer ways High purity
to manufacture this highly unstable liquid explosive. That said, this is not an approach for
Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for bulk production of nitroglycerin. Low
Chemical Technology (ICT) in Pfintzal, Germany, have grade product, primarily for the mining and construction
come up with what might be the safest approach industries, can be made cheaply in bulk already. Where
yet – using microreactors to produce nitroglycerin this approach is a real advantage is in the manufacture
continuously rather than in batches. This is not only of smaller quantities of nitroglycerin at very high grades
safer but also quicker, facilitating a 10-fold increase in for use in the pharmaceutical industry.
production rate. Andrew Turley
Nitrating hydrocarbons
Fraunhofer ict
Nitroglycerin is made by adding glycerol, a simple
hydrocarbon with three hydroxyl groups, to a mixture
of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. The reaction is
extremely exothermic, and if the temperature gets too
high ‘runaway’ can occur, dramatically increasing the
risk of explosion.
Therefore manufacturers continually cool the reaction
mixture and – in the traditional batch process – add
the glycerol drop-by-drop to the acid to allow time for
the heat to dissipate and maintain an excess of acid,
essential to ensure complete nitration of the all the
hydroxyl groups.
Microreactors
Switching to a continuous process in a microreactor
means working with much smaller quantities – safer
for several reasons. It makes it easier to control the
overall temperature and the degree of mixing, which
is important to avoid localised temperature variations
and dangerous ‘hotspots’. It also makes it easier to
www.rsc.org/TheMole
 Did you
know?
Polymers and plastics are
Smart windows store sun’s energy often thought of solely as
insulators. However,
polymers like polyaniline
can conduct electricity
due to their conjugated
electronic structure. Find
out more about
conducting polymers at
http://bit.ly/Mzo1IC

The energy storage

smart window can be
bent and flexed and
still do its job

Scientists in China have developed a smart window that
not only heats and cools a building, but can also act as
an energy storage device to power electrical equipment
within the building.
Smart windows are already in use in some buildings;
they are used to reduce energy consumption by keeping
the interiors cool and controlling the light levels within.
An example of this is in museums, where artefacts can
be damaged by too much sunlight.
Changing colour
Now, Zhixiang Wei from the National Centre for Nano-
science and Technology and colleagues have made a
window that combines a supercapacitor with a window
pane that changes colour in response to an electric
current. In bright sunlight, it absorbs and stores energy,
but when it is full to capacity, the window darkens
to limit the amount of light that enters. This controls
the temperature and brightness of the room and the
captured energy can be used to power equipment, such
as television screens. As the electricity is used up, the
energy storage smart window (ESS window) will lighten
and begin to absorb more sunlight to recharge itself.
The ESS window is made of polyaniline nanowire arrays,
which are deposited onto a transparent film that has
been coated with a conductive layer. The nanowires
are then covered with a gel electrolyte layer to form an
electrode, and two electrodes are sandwiched together
to make a working device.
Flexible devices
Polyaniline has a high capacity and doesn’t cost
much to make, plus it has the added advantages of
being transparent and flexible. ‘Flexible devices are
attracting more and more attention because they are
lightweight, easy to roll up, and can be designed in Have a go�
a more fashionable way. It is no doubt that a flexible
Electrochromic materials
smart window like ours possesses these properties. For
change colour when an
instance, the ESS window can be rolled up like a curtain electric current is applied.
if it is not being used,’ says Wei. Make your own
John Rogers, an expert in photonic devices from electrochromic polymer in
your school lab.
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US,
http://bit.ly/SJHvLF
was cautiously optimistic about the work. ‘Such
technologies, if they can be made cheaply and in forms
that offer long-lived operation, could be valuable in
contexts ranging from automotives to homes,’ he says.
Wei’s team is working on optimising their device by
trying different electrode materials and improving the
window’s electrochromic properties. They are also
looking at integrating a solar cell into the device to store
even more energy.
Holly Sheahan

www.rsc.org/TheMole September 2012 | The Mole | 9