Training Courses

This short course focuses on the experimental methods and data interpretation for the development and safe scale-up of chemical reactions.  The course will include an outline of small scale screening, reaction calorimetry and adiabatic testing, but the focus will be on applications of the data. This will include many case studies illustrating the problems that have arisen in industry.

 Course Outline

1.    Reactive Hazard Accidents

• case studies of reactive accidents
• role of process design, hazop and experimental screening for safe processes

2.    Experimental Thermal Screening

• use of DSC and TSu (thermal screening unit) for experimental screening
• typical data format from TSu
• linking experimental testing to HAZOP type studies
• applications/limitations of data
• kinetic/thermodynamics from data

3.    Understanding the UNDESIRED Reaction

• reaction calorimetry: principle and typical hardware
• typical “forms” of results from reaction calorimetry
• principle of “accumulation” of reagents and runaway reactions
• heterogeneous reactions

4.    Scaling-up Exothermic Reactions

• matching alarms/trips to process type
• design of temperature control system
• kinetic and dose controlled reactions
• acquiring plant heat transfer data
• sizing cooling system
• importance of agitation

5.    Understanding the UNDESIRED reaction

• principal of adiabatic calorimetry and relation to large scale reactors
• experimental simulation of runaway reactions, importance of phi-factor
• typical results from adiabatic tests:
• kinetics and thermodynamics
• simulating large scale runaways in laboratory