Symyx Technologies Europe has announced the availability of the Symyx Screening Pressure Reactor (SPR), a high-throughput research system.
The company said the SPR enables up to a 100-fold increase in the speed of screening and optimising catalysts and catalytic processes.
The Symyx SPR is available for refining, petrochemical and fine chemical applications.
Heather Brown, scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said: 'In a project designed to convert cellulose into useful products, we utilised the Symyx SPR to optimise catalyst composition and reaction temperature.
'We ran more than 120 unique catalyst/temperature combinations, for one part of the project, in less than one week (including analytical).
'Had this work been done using traditional techniques it would have taken the same person nearly four months to complete.
'Using the Symyx SPR also reduced reagent costs, since each reaction could be performed on a 500mg scale.' The Symyx SPR enables up to a 100x increase in experimental throughput over conventional techniques, enabling scientists to test more catalysts under more conditions and to quickly make better informed decisions in the course of targeted catalyst and process optimisation programmes.
In addition, the Symyx SPR enables a single scientist to perform up to 15,000 experiments per year, providing the ability to screen the broadest possible parameter space in the search for breakout catalysts when used as part of an integrated workflow.
The simple, robust design of the Symyx SPR (only one pressure seal per 96 reactors) enables system reliability and up-time.
Offering high-temperature operation to 400C for refining and petrochemicals applications and high-pressure operation to 1,500 psig for fine chemicals applications the Symyx SPR has broad applicability to enhancing many processes.
