Heterogeneously catalysed hydrogenation of liquid crystal precursors in supercritical carbon dioxide The continuous hydrogenation in supercritical carbon dioxide has many advantages: Because of the unlimited solubility of hydrogen in supercritical carbon dioxide (no phase transfer gas ? liquid) the hydrogenation is very fast and the product is obtained solvent-free just by expanding the fluid. The problems with handling solids in the continuous micro-scale plant by NWA (New Ways of Analytics) were solved by using a technology known as RESS: In the RESS (rapid expansion of a supercritical solution) process a solid is extracted by a supercritical fluid and sprayed through a nozzle, resulting in a powder with a small particle size distribution. This extraction technology was combined with a reaction unit to form an integrated process: The liquid crystal precursor is continuously extracted by supercritical carbon dioxide, hydrogenated in a tube reactor filled with a heterogeneous palladium catalyst and sprayed through a nozzle with 100 µm open diameter. The liquid crystal is obtained as a pure solid with an average particle size of 3 to 4 µm.