Chemical Process Development

Lamentations on Chemistry

Lots of semi-batch process development and safety work going on in my lab. We use our reaction calorimeter for a variety of studies now. Naturally we want to know about energy accumulation with a given feed rate or any unforeseen induction or initiation problems in a reaction. We can also home in on recommendations for safe feed rates of reactants into a reaction mass.

What I am beginning to learn from the RC1 work is that running a reaction at low temperature is frequently done for sketchy reasons. Unless there are selectivity or side product issues, you really have to question why the reaction is specified to be run at low temperature. I think some of it comes from habit gained in grad school.  Low temperature may introduce dangerous situations with abrupt initiation by accumulation of unreacted reagents. Or it may lead to overly long feed time with the associated costs of added…

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