Organic synthesis - and its application in the fine chemicals and pharmaceutical industries - is a mature discipline, dominated by batch wise production processes that seemingly trace their roots back to the cauldron of alchemical times. One of the major distinctions of batch production is the size of modern production facilities: economies of scale are achieved by increasing reactor volumes and throughput

Harlan Laboratories is a leading provider of essential, non-clinical contract research, research models, animal diets, and services to the chemical, pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and agrochemical industries, as well as universities, government, and other research organizations. Our focus is on providing customers with products and services to optimize the discovery and safety of new medicines and compounds

In nature, unique type of charming colour development as the extraordinary beautiful cobalt-blue colour of the Morpho butterfly such as in the middle south America is well known. Mason had proposed that this colour originates from light diffraction and scattering resulted from the ordered micro structures. The “structural colour” has been studying from biological microstructure to architectural optics based on molecular self-assembly. Liquid Crystals (LCs) are one of the typical construction caused by molecular self-organization (or molecular engineering) of amphiphilic materials (amphiphiles) easily available from natural resources as fats and oils

The first commercial sol-gel entrapped catalysts demonstrate the long awaited enhancements in terms of selective activity and versatility that the chemistry of sol-gel materials enabled to forecast following the early developments of the sol-gel science and technology in the 1980s. Through selected recent examples, we show how and why hybrid silica gels impact some of the most relevant fine chemical productions

We review in the present paper the key mechanistic features of the NH3-NO/NO2 Fast SCR reaction over vanadium and Fe-zeolite commercial catalysts: this is the main reaction occurring in the urea-SCR technology, that is currently considered the best technique for the abatement of NOx in the exhausts of Diesel engines. A detailed investigation by means of dynamic reactive experiments led to the proposal of an original scheme which accounts for stoichiometry, selectivity and intrinsic kinetics of the global SCR process: NO2 forms surface nitrites and nitrates via dimerization and disproportionation/heterolytic chemisorption, NO reduces nitrates to nitrites, and NH3 enables the rapid and selective decomposition of nitrites to nitrogen via formation of unstable ammonium nitrite

Olefin metathesis transformations in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs) media is a promising alternative to promote greener and economic processes in the elaboration of various building blocks. Nevertheless, the ideal combination of both an efficient and highly recyclable catalytic system authorising to minimize the Ru-contamination in the metathesis products is often delicate. To reach these two challenging features, imidazolium- and pyridinium-tagged Ru-alkylidene pre-catalysts have been designed and fully evaluated in various Ring-Closing Metathesis (RCM) and Cross-Metathesis (CM) reactions

Biocides are used in a wide range of applications and yet public information on their extent of use, efficacy and mechanisms of bacterial interactions is scarce. A number of academic studies have reported the possibility of emerging bacterial resistance following biocide exposure, and highlighted the occurrence of cross-resistance between unrelated antimicrobial agents such as biocides and chemotherapeutic antibiotics. A number of biocide-resistance mechanisms have been described at the bacterial cell and population levels. However, concrete evidence of emerging resistance in vivo is lacking because too few studies have been commissioned. Likewise, there is no consensus yet on the methodologies to be used to study bacterial resistance. Such protocols are urgently needed to provide an appropriate risk assessment on the use of these antimicrobial products

Micro organisms are capable of attacking virtually all materials and are often responsible for their destruction. This can cause major damage not only to buildings, but also in industrial processes. Finding and eliminating the causes and preventing future destruction are vital measures in the fight against the microbially induced destruction of materials. One step in this fight is the identification of those micro organisms that are involved in this destruction process. In its materials protection laboratories, the specialty chemicals group LANXESS uses the polymerase chain reaction (PCR technology) for this purpose

Focussing its’ research on illustrating the potential of continuous flow reactors to enhance chemical synthesis, the micro reactor group at The University of Hull has spent the past nine years developing continuous processes for an array of common synthetic reactions, enabling advantages such as reduced reaction times, enhanced reaction selectivity and increased yield to be highlighted. Using these observations as a starting point, recent studies have centred on increasing reaction complexity through the incorporation of solid-supported reagents, catalysts and biocatalysts into the flow reactors along with targeting the technology towards niche applications such as isotopic labelling

The batch reactor has been the workhorse of chemical ingredient and intermediate manufacturing for decades. However, batch reactors do have limitations, for example, limited heat transfer, poor mixing and time consuming scale-up. In many cases, a micro reactor can often be a more effective manufacturing solution. While various types of micro reactors have been available for some years, it is only now that they are beginning to be fully explored and more commonly used to produce fine chemicals on a bulk scale

The application of flow reactors to increase the parameter space of organic chemistry reactions in current laboratory practice is explored. Using examples such as DielsAlder reactions, Knorr reactions and others,, the paper demonstrates the advantages of flow reactors operating in a parameter space up to 350°C (662°F) and 200 bar (2900 psi), sometimes under supercritical conditions, and in some cases without catalysts. The flow reactors described in the paper offer for the first time an alternative solution to the microwave batch scale up

Flow reactors with millimetric internal dimensions, to which Corning Advanced-FlowTM glass reactor belong, are a proven technology which enables the switch from batch mode to continuous processing of chemical reactions. This results in more economical, efficient and safer processes. These reactors can be used from development to production. An efficient scale-up, complementary to numbering-up, is obtained by increasing channel height or / and the footprint and internally dividing the flow. The effects of both approaches on a specific design are presented. The solution proposed – higher footprint and internal split – shows comparable pressure drop, emulsion quality and residence time distribution with better heat transfer at equivalent residence times. These good performances achieved in scaled-up Advanced-FlowTM reactors enable the increase of overall production without altering the productivity achieved at lower scale

Electrochemical methods have been used to study the structure and function of nucleic acids for more than 50 years. These approaches complement other experimental techniques, which we illustrate by using examples from studies of processes involved in the repair of DNA damage. The excellent sensitivity of the electrochemical approaches makes them good candidates for use as biosensors of a wide range of molecules and biological processes

A nanocomposite of poly(propylene imine) dendrimer (PPI) and gold nanoparticle (AuNP) was prepared by cyclic voltammetric co-deposition on a screen printed carbon electrode (SPCE) and used as a platform for an electrochemical DNA nanobiosensor. The average size of the nanocomposite was <100 nm, with PPI clustering around AuNPs. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements indicated that the dendrimeric gold nanoplatform markedly improved the conductivity and response of the DNA biosensor, and gave a very low detection limit of 3 x10-10 M

During the European Council held in march 2000 in Lisbon, the Member States of the European Union decided to make the EU "the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, and respect for the environment by 2010". The “Lisbon Strategy” was born. Within this frame, several programs, structures and agencies were created to implement the agenda. The creation of an European Research Area (ERA) is underway to respond to the need to integrate research programs and to stimulate Europe wide cooperation among research institutions, industry and SMEs