Integrating reactive distillation with continuous flow processing

A continuous flow platform has been developed that integrates reactive distillation with modern flow reactor technology. This has been applied to the successful flow synthesis of a series of tetrahydroquinolines generated through an InCl3-catalysed Povarov reaction between different aryl imines and cyclopentadiene that was generated by a continuous distillation from its dimeric precursor via a thermal retro Diels-Alder reaction. The developed continuous process represents a robust approach to these important heterocyclic entities which were prepared on the gram scale within less than one hour.