We were absolutely delighted to present the awards to our 11 Winners of our ‘Young Chemist Award’ at our ‘6th Winter Process Chemistry Conference’ in Birmingham today. They have all presented their work at the conference and it has been fantastic to hear from them all. Thanks to our judges – Ian Lennon at #chiralquest,

Scientific Update are delighted to announce the winners of our Young Chemist Award. The standard of entries for this new award were incredibly high and Dr Will Watson, Technical Director and Dr John Studley, Science Director had a difficult task selecting the winners. Due to the quality of entries it was decided to stretch to

Gin is rapidly becoming the nations favourite tipple. Its undergone a modern renaissance with familiar trade names such as Gordon’s, Plymouth and London and multiple artisan distilleries appearing country-wide. It’s even drawn synthetic organic chemists out of the lab and into the refineries. This week at our 5th Winter Process Chemistry Conference in Manchester UK

In December 2017 the United Nations proclaimed that 2019 will be international year of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements.[1] This coincides with the 150th anniversary of the periodic system discovered by Dmitry Mendeleev in 1869. We at Scientific Update love a good celebration so over the coming months, and in honour of this

  A patent issued this month cites the use of catalytic tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) in the ring opening esterification of glycidyl ethers using acrylic acid and methacrylic acid (see Example 7). In PTC esterifications, we typically expect the presence of a base to form the carboxylate salt from the acid then the quat acrylate would

Britest is a leading exponent of whole process design for the chemical, pharma and other process manufacturing industries. We are pleased to be collaborating with Britest on our course ‘Chemical Engineering: What Scientists and other Engineers Need to Know’. This course has been developed, and is presented, by chemical engineers and chemists who specialise in facilitating knowledge

Scientific Update is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr John Studley, formerly Head of Process Chemistry for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, UK. John will join the team at Scientific Update in August 2018 as Scientific Director bringing over 20 years’ experience in drug discovery, process chemistry and scale up, having previously worked for Rhone-Poulenc, Oxford Asymmetry and Vertex

Preparative chromatography is a versatile purification technique used in various industrial sectors including petrochemistry, sugar production, pharmaceutical and fine chemistry, to name only a few. While this technology is often considered complex, expensive and sometimes not scaleable, industrial success stories prove the opposite. In our recent webinar, Dr. Pfister from Ypso-Facto presented a reliable approach

A patent just issued last month to Sachem, one of the most veteran manufacturers of high purity quaternary ammonium phase-transfer catalysts, that describes how to inhibit color formation of quat hydroxides in non-aqueous solvents (glycols). Sachem has been a leader in the commercial supply of quat hydroxides, especially those used in the manufacture of semiconductors.

Phase-transfer catalyst or PTC is a catalyst that facilitates the migration of a reactant from one phase into another phase where reaction occurs. Phase-transfer catalysis is a special form of heterogeneous catalysis. Ionic reactants are often soluble in an aqueous phase but insoluble in an organic phase in the absence of the phase-transfer catalyst. The catalyst functions like a detergent for solubilizing