Creaflow is developing a flow plate reactor that is ideal for photochemical and electrochemical processes. It is easy to vary and highly scalable. ‘As a start-up, we were quickly embraced by the market.’

The most common reaction on Earth is photochemical: namely, photosynthesis. ‘Yet photochemistry is still rarely found in scaled-up industrial processes’, says Koen Van Aken, Creaflow’s CSO. The company is based in BlueChem Antwerp. ‘However, there is growing interest in using photochemistry as an alternative energy source because it opens up avenues that are not possible with traditional chemistry.’ That is why Van Aken, together with business partner Ajinomoto OmniChem, a Belgian producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients and fine chemicals, started developing new photochemical reactors for industry.