Uniqsis has published details of a new flow-through protocol developed by the Lamaty Group at Universite de Montpellier (France) on a FlowSyn™ Multi-X system that provides efficient ring closing olefin metathesis.

Olefin metathesis is an important reaction that provides a useful synthetic route to highly functionalized molecules such as drug precursors or polymers. Although this reaction is highly efficient in batch, scaling-up usually results in poor reproducibility. While several research groups have reported the development of olefin metathesis in continuous flow, most of them have focused on the use of a heterogeneous catalyst, which currently show limited recyclability.

Application Note 31 describes how the Lamaty Group (http://www.greenchem.univ-montp2.fr/page8/page15/FL.html), employing a Uniqsis FlowSyn™ Multi-X flow chemistry system, has achieved use of a homogeneous catalyst in an environmentally-friendly solvent, to bring ring closing metathesis of olefins one step closer to scale-up at the industrial level.