HYDROGENATION: Functional, safe and reliable equipment from Buchi

Hydrogenation chemistry demands that your equipment is both reliable and safe. This is because it often involves the combination of flammable solvent, pyrophoric catalyst, explosive hydrogen and of course not forgetting the hazards of your reactants and products. Furthermore this is typically pressurised. It is situations like this that you need to have complete trust in your equipment. Made in Switzerland to the highest standards and all relevant European safety regulations, BuchiGlasUster have been designing and manufacturing pressure systems for over 30 years and examples are to be found all around the world from Universities to some of the largest companies in the Oil, Pharma and Electronics sectors. Not only are the reactor systems we produce safe they are also designed to be easy to use with features such as fast-action-closure and easily exchangeable vessels (the Kiloclave for example can accept 500ml or 20L vessels and all those in between). We supply both sparge tubes and hollow stirrer shafts which when combined with our turbine agitator ensures both efficient mixing and hydrogen gas entrainment. There is also a sampling system which can be operated during the reaction thus avoiding possible stalling of the catalyst. Baskets are available should you want to contain your catalyst and there are various options for safely filtering the product whilst still under pressure. Hydrogen gas can be dosed in with the Buchi BPC2 – a sophisticated instrument which can maintain a set-pressure of hydrogen and measure the gas in moles (or litres) to do so. Unlike mass flow controllers the BPC can dose over both a very wide range of pressure and delivery rates. Unlike mass flow meters the BPC2 has a number of built-in safety features which prevent uncontrolled flow of hydrogen gas. The technology has been well developed over many years and they have been supplied to many companies performing hydrogenations from catalyst manufacturers to R&D and Pilot Plants belonging to the largest Pharmaceutical companies in the world. In terms of monitoring we supply the BLS2 software package which can display your real-time hydrogen uptake and hence reaction profile. This not only tells you when your reaction is complete but how this varies over time. Thus on the graph you can see just when hydrogen uptake began, evidence of rate limiting factors, evidence of 2-stage hydrogenations and where is the most efficient point to stop the reaction. By varying temperature, pressure, catalyst type and loading (etc) you can easily monitor the effect on reaction rate in order to optimise your hydrogenation. The software can issue a Hydrogenation Report for your records.