METTLER TOLEDO
 

Kinetics Analysis

Kinetics Analysis

Simplify Kinetic Data of Organic Reactions

Kinetic data improves:
  • Process safety - Kinetic data can provide understanding of the driving force behind reactions and how substrate concentrations affect processes, which leads to safer processes
  • Process understanding - A better understanding of the reaction mechanism leads to a faster optimal synthetic route
  • Robust process - Better process knowledge leads to more consistent processes

In reactor design, knowledge of the reaction kinetics is essential, because reaction kinetics allows calculation of the production capacity (or, in discontinuous operation, the reaction time) and improves selectivity of reactions. By using reaction calorimetry to measure kinetic data, the proportionality between chemical and thermal conversion is assumed. Because calorimetry always delivers a signal that may be the sum of different thermal effects (among them also physical effects), the correspondence between chemical and thermal conversion must be verified – for example, by chemical analysis. During measurement of kinetic data, isothermal conditions are preferred to avoid the influence of the exponential term of Arrhenius law.

Valuable information about reaction kinetics can be obtained using in situ analytical techniques, such as ReactIR™, to produce real-time concentration profiles of the reaction species. The ReactIR DiComp™ technology has been used extensively as an in situ kinetic probe. ReactIR™ technology is well suited to kinetics research for three principal reasons: First, data can be collected very rapidly, resulting in accurate determination of reaction rates. Second, the nearly universal chemical compatibility of diamond allows data to be collected in challenging environments such as strong acids. Finally, because ReactIR technology permits in situ characterization of component concentrations, unstable species are observed that may not be measurable by chromatographic or other offline techniques.