On April 24, Chemical Engineering Journal (IF=10.652), a top international chemical journal, published online the paper of Shi Xiaoqi as the the first author, a graduate student, class of 2018, entitled “Visible-Light Photooxidation of Benzene to Phenol in Continuous-flow Microreactors”, with our school as the first affiliation.

This paper reports the direct synthesis of phenol by photo-oxidation of benzene in continuous-flow microreactors. Aiming at the problems of long duration, low yield, poor selectivity and high safety risk of oxidation of benzene by inorganic oxidant, this study creatively adopts organic oxidant, and combines microreactors with LED light source to convert benzene directly into phenol at room temperature. Moreover, it makes a research of apparent reaction kinetics and oxidation mechanism in microreactors, which is of great theoretical significance.

The publication of this paper fully demonstrates the scientific research level of graduate students in our school, as well as the great progress made by Faculty of Chemical Engineering in scientific research, discipline building, talent training and so on. This research work has been funded by Jiangsu Provincial Graduate Innovation Training Fund. At the same time, it has been supported by Huaiyin Institute of Technology National Local Joint Engineering Research Center and Graduate Student Scientific Research Innovation Projects in Jiangsu province.

Related Link：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2021.129976