The Maulide Group at the University of Vienna (Austria) describe how a devastating water leak in a nearby chemistry laboratory prompted them to search for alternative, water-free, options to Liebig condensers for refluxing. The group teamed up with Green Labs Austria (https://greenlabsaustria.at/) to see if they could provide and share a more sustainable solution to water cooled refluxing in the lab.

Professor Nuno Maulide commented “For many years we had been using oil baths and Liebig water condensers for our reflux reactions. It was a devastating, and costly water leak that prompted us to take action and look for ways to minimise water use, and with that the risk of a similar incident occurring again”. He added “Green Labs Austria was enthusiastic about their experience with lab tools from UK-based sustainability specialists – Asynt. As a direct alternative to a water condenser, we have found the CondenSyn air condenser extremely convenient to use and its ‘plug-and-play’ installation has rendered reaction set up very straightforward. We have also found the CondenSyn air condenser to be very efficient at condensing refluxing solvents – even volatile liquids such as methylene chloride. In addition, swapping out our messy oil baths for DrySyn MULTI oil-free heating plate, not only improved user safety, but has allowed us to run three reactions simultaneously at the desired temperature, requiring minimal space and only one magnetic hotplate stirrer. This also reduces our energy consumption within the lab. With no loss in agitation efficiency, we have found that the DrySyn warms up our reactions much more rapidly than a common oil bath, and the temperature regulation is excellent. This new heating device is more energy efficient and we no longer have to find a way to dispose of degraded or contaminated oil from our oil baths”.

Further Information: www.asynt.com