Lacamas Laboratories has a 200 ton glycol chiller that provides low temperature glycol down to -10°C as well as a cooling tower to provide chilled water to all of our reactors and overheads. The glycol chiller can also be used with non-aqueous heat transfer fluid for water-sensitive reactions. These high-throughput heat transfer systems are especially useful for controlling exotherms with precise temperature control.
Lacamas Laboratories also uses direct liquid nitrogen injection for low temperature reactions. Such reactions include the following:
- Lithium halogen exchange
- O-directed metallation
- Transmetallation
- Enolate chemistry (use of n-BuLi / LDA / LiHMD etc)
- Low temperature crystallizations (for certain low melting materials)
- Highly exothermic reactions – the need for extreme cooling can sometimes be obviated by use of continuous flow.
