Affordable and Versatile 'Plug-and-Play' Flow Reactor Developed for Academic Labs

Asynt has announced their exciting new flow-chemistry platform, the fReactor, an affordable device created to bring the many advantages of flow chemistry to your laboratory through easy-to-use, flexible and intuitive design.

Developed in collaboration with chemists and chemical engineers from the renowned Institute of Process Research and Development (iPRD) at the University of Leeds (UK), the fReactor is simple to assemble and modify, making it suitable for a wide range of continuous-flow processes.

Professor John Blacker, Head of the iPRD commented “Our continuous stirred tank reactor design overcomes the limitations of tubular flow chemistry systems, most notably the fReactor allows both single and multiphasic reactions to be carried out across a range of residence times”. He added “With the fReactor, just add a hotplate and pump and you are ready to start investigating flow chemistry experiments. Because of its’ low price and total operating volume of just 10ml, the fReactor is an ideal device for laboratories wanting to evaluate the many advantages of small-scale flow chemistry”.

Integrating the efficiency of pipe-flow processing with the advanced mixing of a continuous stirred tank reactor, the fReactor provides chemists with a versatile “plug-and-play” setup allowing exploration of continuous-flow processing, with little expertise required.

The fReactor platform comprises of 5 modules, which combine to give a reaction zone delivering a good residence time distribution. These interconnected modules are located on a metal heat-transfer baseplate which sits on conventional laboratory hotplate-stirrer. Nikil Kapur, Professor of Applied Fluid Mechanics based at the School of Mechanical Engineering, commented ‘With mixing in each zone, the fReactor offers outstanding flow chemistry reaction flexibility. Multiple ports allow telescoping of reactions, sampling or integration of sensors within the reactors. Robustly constructed, the fReactor is both easy to use and simple to clean.’