Flow grams-per-hour production enabled by hierarchical bimodal porous silica gel supported palladium column reactor having low pressure drop

We describe a novel strategy to increase the unit-time-productivity of flow synthesis by using hierarchical bimodal porous silica gel (HBPSG) supported palladium column reactors. Because HBPSG has a significantly large surface area, the column reactors have low pressure drop, enabling high-volume production. We demonstrated flow synthesis of the precursor of adapalene, a pharmaceutical compound, at 5 g/h which is over 10-fold greater productivity than previous approaches.