Gorillas running faster for better chemistry...

What's the connection between Gorillas and HEL products, you ask ? come back soon for the answer ...

Ok, the real connection is that in the best HEL fundraising tradition, Raj Mann (see HEL Raisers...) and Tref Willingham will be joining the London Great Gorilla Run on September 27th. If you know them, you will be aware that they don't need dressing up (proof coming soon...) !

There are many charity runs but none are quite like this – 1,000 people, all dressed up as gorillas and going ape for a day!

Since the first race in 2003, thousands of people have donned their gorilla suits and walked, run or jogged the 7km City of London route that takes in sights such as Tower Bridge and The Tate Modern. Read more about the Gorilla Runs and their purpose at the Gorilla Runs website .

P.S. if you want to donate click here for Raj's giving page

Breaking down barriers with real time, on-line calculation – Process Development using Calorimetry

Reaction calorimetry has been well recognised as a valuable aid to process development. Not only for safety and safe scale up, but also as an aid for guiding the synthetic route and process optimisation. However, uptake by development chemists has been VERY limited, this due partly to cost but more often due to the complexity of the calculations needed for data generation.

HEL has been developing calorimetry solutions for over 21 years and have come up with a new technology that makes calorimetry accessible to development chemists on ANY stirred reactor without special features or adaptations. When a reactor is computer controlled, nothing exceptional is needed – with computer control in place and the availability of temperature data, on-line heat release rate data can be readily generated.

The results are quantitative, rather than just indicative, and available without any effort or additional experimental time for activities such as calibration. When greater accuracy is needed, a heat flow (HF) meter may be used to perform a quick calibration check. This too is made simple and requires no knowledge of calorimetry methodology by the user.

These features can also be integrated into custom reaction calorimeters, including some older existing units. This will enable the users to save time, both by speeding up experiments and eliminating the need for off-line data analysis.

Where this new technology is implemented with a power compensation calorimeter, the on-line analysis will produce exact results without any assumptions being necessary. And for such systems there are no calibrations required. In the case of HF calorimeters, for the most accurate results one calibration is needed, although this is also completely automated and the online calibration calculations are used immediately for the reaction being performed.

Lord's Cricket Ground and other marketing issues

Someone has to be the first to write something in this blog... so I guess it will be me, as it is my idea to start it.

What did I start this Blog for ? well, its all about HEL. About our day to day and also perhaps to improve our own internal communication by sharing our various work experiences. It will be nice to read some anecdotal entries, but also to hear about each other's work, achievements, professional problems, etc. We could get some research results and application notes published here, and let our customers comment and even post their own opinions.

So, what have I been up to ? I just spoke to one of the event organisers in the Lord's Cricket Ground, and arranged for a tour of the grounds at the end of our User Conference on September 30th. She said that there is a very good chance to be able to see both the Long Room and the Players Changing Rooms ! bookings for this event are coming in fast currently. We still have a few more places but the space is limited so hurry if you want to join.

We are also venturing into a new market - and will be exhibiting for the first time at ArabLAB 2009, January 2009 in Dubai, so I have been busy arranging this. Our website is being overhauled and you should be able to see some changes within the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can see some information on some of our new products already there, such as AutoMATE II, Phi-TEC I, and FlowCAT.

Visit again soon for more...