Tuning fluid solvents for chemical reactions

Remarkable opportunities exist for the fruitful exploitation of the special properties of supercritical and nearcritical fluids as solvents for chemical reactions. Solution properties may be tuned, with thermodynamic conditions or cosolvents, to modify rates, yields, and selectivities, and supercritical fluids offer greatly enhanced mass transfer for heterogeneous reactions. Also, both supercritical fluids and nearcritical water can often replace environmentally undesirable solvents or catalysts, or avoid undesirable byproducts. Furthermore, rational design of solvent systems can also modify reactions to facilitate process separations. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.