Chemists receive boost with PTFE innovation

Published: 14-Jul-2008

Cambridge-based company Asynt in the UK, a provider of novel products and services or organic chemists, has developed reaction vessel lids using PTFE that aim to simplify current methods of using the apparatus.

Cambridge-based company Asynt in the UK, a provider of novel products and services or organic chemists, has developed reaction vessel lids using PTFE that aim to simplify current methods of using the apparatus.

Apart from being less prone to breakage, the lids are only marginally more expensive than glass and offer a direct replacement for the standard glass item. Screw-in ports in a range of sizes replace the conventional glass taper joints that are prone to seizure and vulnerable to breakage, particularly when heavy probes such as FTIR are in use. The mechanical properties of PTFE allow the lid to be made with a lower profile, which combined with a built-in stirrer guide significantly reduces the height of the reaction station, giving better accessibility and safety. PTFE has better thermal insulation properties than glass, reducing condensation on the lid and making processes like distillation more efficient.

"Glass reaction vessels are becoming more complicated, and can be festooned with a variety of probes, stirrers and so on," Asynt managing director Martin Fordham. "Glass is such a brittle, breakage-prone material that when our engineers suggested making reaction vessel lids from PTFE, it sounded an obvious way of making the chemist's life easier."

Asynt also offer custom design and manufacture of laboratory equipment from traceable pure or glass-filled PTFE materials.

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