High-Pressure Chemistry: When and Why?

Many chemical transformations require gases as reactants and perform better at high pressures. The decision to conduct a reaction at high pressure is sometimes an economic one, as it often requires smaller quantities of an expensive catalyst, a higher-yielding process, or reduced cycle times. However, pressure-dependent trends like reactivity or selectivity are not always proportional or linear. Therefore, it is important to study those effects early in the development process.

J-Star Research can study high pressure reactions for many reactive gases commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry, including:

  • Hydrogen
  • Carbon monoxide
  • Syngas
  • Carbon dioxide
  • Ethylene and
  • Air
  • Other reactive gases could be potentially used as well.

Cutting-edge High-Pressure Chemistry Capabilities

J-Star Research’s high-pressure capabilities combine the best of reactor design, reaction engineering and 1st principle understanding. J-Star’s systems are based on recent reactor design and are validated for mixing and heat-transfer properties. Optimal operating ranges are determined using best engineering practices. When we couple 1st principle understanding with reaction engineering, we define scalable processes.

Multiple systems are available, gradually scaling up from the initial HTS scale (<1 mL), over a medium 1 to 3 mL scale for parallel optimization, to larger single computer-controlled high-pressure reactors from 0.075 to 20L vessel volume.

Our systems record and control the internal reactor temperature, pressure and gas consumption, providing reaction profiles for in-line end of reaction determination and kinetic profiling. If needed, we can also add reagents or catalysts to the pressurized reactors.