2009 R&D 100 Winner
Cleaner and more affordable petroleum products are a unifying mission in the oil and gas industry, so much so that a device that can greatly speed the testing process for new catalysis candidates should make a big difference in the industry’s fortunes. The Symyx Screening Pressure Reactor (SPR) from Symyx Technologies, Sunnyvale, Calif., is a refining and petrochemical test platform developed with high-throughput in mind. It is able to screen catalysts up to 400°C for refining and petrochemicals applications, and high-pressure operation to 1,500 psig for fine chemicals applications under a wide variety of conditions. It performs about 50 to 100 times faster than other techniques. There are numerous systems that use a microtiter-size array of vials or containers as chemical reactors, as does the SPR system, but no other processors of small-scale arrays can use the combination of high temperature and moderate pressures required. Also the SPR has the option of a multi-gas feed system and should have high reliability thanks to a simple design that features only one pressure seal per 96 reactors.
Technology
Refining and petrochemical test platform
Developer
Symyx Technologies
