Radleys has published a technical bulletin that demonstrates how the Lara controlled laboratory reactor (CLR) is able to accurately and reproducibly control polymerisation experiments.
Lara is a flexible, modular CLR unit which enables rapid interchange of glass vessels from 100ml to 10 litres and the integration of third party devices such as circulators, pumps, balances, syringe pumps and so on making it the idea process development tool.
Lara's drag-and-drop software allows full control and data logging of all devices and parameters.
The application note (TDS04S) describes a series of experiments in which the Lara CLR was used to automatically control the addition of monomer, initiator and reagent where both linear and variable rates of addition of feed materials were employed.
The experiments demonstrate that the Lara CLR can be used to automatically ensure that the molecular weight and structure of the resulting polymer can be predicted, controlled and reproduced.
The first experiment was run with a predetermined increasing monomer addition rate.
The second experiment was run with a linear rate of monomer addition and a decreasing variable rate of initiator addition.
In both experiments the monomer addition rate was gradually increased over several hours to ensure that the relative concentration of monomer stayed constant throughout the multiple feed step of the reaction.
As the test polymerisation reaction was exothermic, the experiments included the use of feedback loops to ensure safe and controlled additions.
