Isocyanate Reactions

Isocyanates are critical building blocks for high performance polyurethane-based polymers that make up coatings, foams, adhesives, elastomers, and insulation. Concerns over exposure to residual isocyanates led to new limits for residual isocyanates in new products. Traditional analytical methods for measuring the residual isocyanate (NCO) concentration using offline sampling and analysis raise concerns. In situ monitoring with process analytical technology addresses these challenges and enables manufacturers and formulators to ensure that product quality specifications, personnel safety, and environmental regulations are met.

Polymerization reaction measurement is crucial to produce material that meets requirements, including Immediate understanding, accurate and reproducible, Improved safety.

Impurity profiling aims at identification and subsequent quantification of specific components present at low levels, usually less than 1% and ideally lower than 0.1 %.

Grignard reactions are one of the most important reaction classes in organic chemistry. Grignard reactions are useful for forming carbon-carbon bonds. Grignard reactions form alcohols from ketones and aldehydes, as well as react with other chemicals to form a myriad of useful compounds. Grignard reactions are performed using a Grignard reagent, which is typically a alkyl-, aryl- or vinyl- organomagnesium halide compound. To ensure optimization and safety of Grignard reactions in research, development and production, in situ monitoring and understanding reaction heat flow is important.

Hydrogenation reactions are used in the manufacturing of both bulk and fine chemicals for reducing multiple bonds to single bonds. Catalysts are typically used to promote these reactions and reaction temperature, pressure, substrate loading, catalyst loading, and agitation rate all effect hydrogen gas uptake and overall reaction performance. Thorough understanding of this energetic reaction is important and PAT technology in support of HPLC analysis ensure safe, optimized and well-characterized chemistry.

Highly reactive chemistry is a terminology used to describe chemical reactions that are particularly challenging to handle and develop due to the potentially hazardous and/or energetic nature of the reactants, intermediates and products that are present during synthesis. These chemistries often involve highly exothermic reactions which require specialized equipment or extreme operating conditions (such as low temperature) to ensure adequate control. Ensuring safe operating conditions, minimizing human exposure, and gaining the maximum amount of information from each experiment are key factors in successfully designing and scaling-up highly reactive chemistries.

Many processes require reactions to be run under high pressure. Working under pressure is challenging and collecting samples for offline analysis is difficult and time consuming. A change in pressure could affect reaction rate, conversion and mechanism as well as other process parameters plus sensitivity to oxygen, water, and associated safety issues are common problems.

Halogenation occurs when one of more fluorine, chlorine, bromine, or iodine atoms replace one or more hydrogen atoms in an organic compound. Depending on the specific halogen, the nature of the substrate molecule and overall reaction conditions, halogenation reactions can be very energetic and follow different pathways. For this reason, understanding these reactions from a kinetics and thermodynamic perspective is critical to ensuring yield, quality and safety of the process.

Catalysts create an alternative path to increase the speed and outcome of a reaction, so a thorough understanding of the reaction kinetics is important. Not only does that provide information about the rate of the reaction, but also provides insight into the mechanism of the reaction. There are two types of catalytic reactions: heterogeneous and homogeneous. Heterogeneous is when the catalyst and reactant exist in two different phases. Homogeneous is when the catalyst and the reactant are in the same phase..

A synthesis reaction is a chemical process in which simple elements or compounds combine to form a more complex product. It is represented by the equation: A + B → AB.

Design of Experiments (DoE) requires experiments to be conducted under well-controlled and reproducible conditions in chemical process optimization. Chemical synthesis reactors are designed to perform DoE investigations ensuring high quality data.

Reaction mechanisms describe the successive steps at the molecular level that take place in a chemical reaction. Reaction mechanisms cannot be proven, but rather postulated based on empirical experimentation and deduction. In situ FTIR spectroscopy provides information to support reaction mechanisms hypotheses.

Organometallic Synthesis, or Organometallic Chemistry, refers to the process of creating organometallic compounds, and is among the most researched areas in chemistry. Organometallic compounds are frequently used in fine chemical syntheses and to catalyze reactions. In situ Infrared and Raman spectroscopy are among the most powerful analytical methods for the study of organometallic compounds and syntheses.

Oligonucleotide synthesis is the chemical process by which nucleotides are specifically linked to form a product of desired sequenced.

Alkylation is the process by when an alkyl group is added to a substrate molecule. Alkylation reactions are a widely used technique in organic chemistry.

This page outlines what epoxides are, how they are synthesized and technology to track reaction progression, including kinetics and key mechanisms.

The Suzuki and related cross-coupling reactions use transition metal catalysts, such as palladium complexes, to form C-C bonds between alkyl and aryl halides with various organic compounds.

Lithiation and organolithium reactions are key in the development of complex pharmaceutical compounds; organolithium compounds also act as initiators in certain polymerization reactions.

C-H bond activation is a series of mechanistic processes by which stable carbon-hydrogen bonds in organic compounds are cleaved.

Organocatalysis refers to the employment of particular organic molecules to speed up chemical reactions through catalytic activation.

A continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) is a vessel in which reagents and reactants flow into a reactor, while the reaction product exits the vessel.

Click reactions refer to chemical reactions that meet the criteria of click chemistry. Click reactions are typically fast, high-yielding, and occur under mild conditions, making them ideal for a variety of applications.

Hydroformylation, also known as oxo synthesis, is a chemical reaction involving the addition of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H₂) to an unsaturated compound, typically an alkene or alkyne. The reaction is catalyzed by transition metal complexes, such as rhodium or cobalt, leading to the formation of aldehydes or aldehyde derivatives.