Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan, Vol.43, No.12, 1023-1028, 2010
Production of AgCl Nanoparticles Using Microreactors
We have developed a microreactor system for the continuous producting of nanoparticles, and we have clarified the relationship between the mixing performance of reactors and the particle size. First, we evaluated the mixing performance of reactors by carring out the Villermaux-Dushman reaction and determined the experimental conditions for producing AgCl nanoparticles. Next, we developed the microreactor system by including a pressure sensor and an ultrasonic generator in order to prevent the clogging of nanoparticles. Finally, we produced AgCl nanoparticles and evaluated the mixing performance and the particle size. The operating time of the new system was long. Moreover, we found that as the mixing performance improves the size of produced particles decreases and the particle size distribution becomes sharper. We produced AgCl nanoparticles with a size of 86 nm using the microreactor that had the best mixing performance among the three reactors we tested in this study; the coefficient of variation (Cv) of the size distribution of the produced nanoparticles was 26.1%.