Would you like water with that?
Scientific Update Blog
by claire
7M ago
Written by Ben Littler – May 16th, 2024. No piece of apparatus caused me more trouble in graduate school in the mid-1990’s than water cooled reflux condensers. The laboratory that I worked in was several floors up in a relatively old building which resulted in wide fluctuations in water pressure. Setting up an overnight reaction under reflux was an exercise in guessing whether the current water pressure would rise or fall over the following hours, and then securing the tubing the apparatus with clips and metal wire to overcome a pressure spike and using a mechanical contraption with a leaky bu ..read more
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Pulp Fiction
Scientific Update Blog
by johnstudley
7M ago
Written by John Studley, 7th May 2024 As most process chemists know (but perhaps not so many discovery chemists) DMSO is nasty material. It undergoes explosive autocatalytic decomposition at or near its boiling point (189°C) generating non-condensable gases and concomitant extremely rapid pressure increases that can rupture a reactor vessel like a knife through butter. In terms of reaction kinetics, decomposition of the pure solvent at 195°C results in a 3ºC min-1 temperature rise and a pressure increase of 100 psi min-1 at maximum rate. As the temperature increases exponentially, following Ar ..read more
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Some Elements are More Equal Than Others
Scientific Update Blog
by claire
10M ago
In George Orwell’s classic 1945 novella ‘Animal Farm’ the revolutionary livestock develop the slogan “Four legs good, two legs bad” to summarize their views on the farmer and other humans. As the novella progresses, we see that things cannot be simplified so readily, and so I was encouraged by the recent excellent article by Brianna Barbu in Chemical and Engineering News (February 12/19, 2024) showing that the mindset “earth-abundant metals good, precious metals bad” was a similar oversimplification when it came to making homogeneous catalysis greener. It was particularly heartening to see so ..read more
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A Dangerous Bromance
Scientific Update Blog
by claire
10M ago
The introduction of bromine into intermediates is a key transformation in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and other high value materials, due to the reactivity and selectivity it offers for further transformation, over for example the generally cheaper, more common but less reactive chlorinated analogues. Bromine is commonly introduced by one of three reagents: bromine itself (Br2), HBr, or N-bromo-succinimide (NBS), all with or without mild oxidants, although other methods are available (see the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharma Roundtable on Brominations for an overview – https://reagent ..read more
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Singing in the Rain- Removing Residual Lithium Salts From Flow Reactors Under Anhydrous Conditions
Scientific Update Blog
by johnstudley
10M ago
Organolithium reagents are powerful and ubiquitous intermediates used extensively in synthetic chemistry both in academic and industrial settings. The stability of these reagents often necessitates generation and rapid processing at cryogenic temperatures: some organolithium species are chemically or configurationally unstable at temperatures above -100°C. An example is the dichloromethyllithium anion generated during the Mattison homologation reaction used in the synthesis of Vaborbactam (Figure 1).1 The need for low temperature generation and processing of the organometallic species stems fr ..read more
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Per-and Polyfluorinated Alkyl (PFAS) Substances: Ubique Perpetuum
Scientific Update Blog
by johnstudley
10M ago
In December 2023 Nick Tyrell from ALMAC gave an interesting and timely presentation at our Winer Process Chemistry Conference in Liverpool, UK on the proposed EU ban of all per– and poly-fluorinated materials, including polymers and the fluorinating reagents we use routinely to introduce fluorine or fluorine-containing functional groups into complex molecules. The details of the proposed changes were recently highlighted in the Organic Process Research and Development journal.1 These changes could potentially have a profound impact on the chemical industry (Figure 1) including serious disrupti ..read more
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Chemical Development and Scale Up
Scientific Update Blog
by helenspencer
11M ago
We spoke to chemists at different stages of their careers about their experiences of attending our ‘Chemical Development and Scale Up in the Fine Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries’ training course. Ben Littler  Ben told us that he had taken the ‘Chem Dev’ course twice as an early career process chemist!  Both courses were held as in-house training events. It was fascinating to hear about Ben’s experiences going back to the start of his career journey! The first time Ben took the course was at AMRI in his first year after finishing his academic career and it was led by Trevor (T ..read more
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The Importance of Mentors and Teachers 
Scientific Update Blog
by claire
11M ago
In my previous blog I referred to changes in learning models for industrial chemists described in an editorial in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry by Dean G. Brown on ‘Adapting to the Changing Landscape of Biotech-Driven Drug Discovery’ (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.3c02035) that I discovered through Derek Lowe’s ‘In The Pipeline’ blog titled ‘The Current Industry Landscape’ on 27 Nov 2023. Another key topic in the editorial was the Importance of biotech mentors for early career scientists.   I was extremely fortunate in my early career where I was mentored at the CDMO by one of my cu ..read more
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Changing Models for Training Industrial Chemists 
Scientific Update Blog
by claire
1y ago
Derek Lowe’s ‘In The Pipeline’ blog titled ‘The Current Industry Landscape’ on 27 Nov 2023 alerted me to an excellent overview editorial in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry by Dean G. Brown on ‘Adapting to the Changing Landscape of Biotech-Driven Drug Discovery’ (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.3c02035). One thing that struck me as I read both the blog and the editorial was that if I simply replaced terms such as ‘medicinal chemistry’ in my mind with ‘process chemistry’ then this too presented an excellent review of the history of how industrial development chemistry had evolved over my career, an ..read more
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How do you Safely Scale up a Given Chemical Reaction?
Scientific Update Blog
by helenspencer
1y ago
If you are working in industry and are responsible for safety, how do you safely scale up a given chemical reaction? How do you tackle issues like heat transfer, gas release, exposure control, waste stream issues and more? The core of any process safety study is a correct description of both heat and gas release associated to the reaction. How can these be determined experimentally and how can data be used to ensure a safe scale-up? Each safety study starts with retrieving relevant safety data of your starting materials and reagents, a good starting point is the ECHA website where a ..read more
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