(82c) New Benchtop Instrument for Process Safety and Development

A new bench-top calorimeter has been developed which incorporates aspects of different calorimeter used in process development, optimization, scale-up and safety. The instrument is introduced as the Multi-Modal Calorimeter or MMC™. The MMC is designed around the VariPhi™ technology (Chippett, CCPS 2003) developed to enhance the capabilities of accelerating rate calorimeter (ARC). This calorimeter is able to run isothermally, adiabatically and in scanning mode. The instrument can be run in traditional adiabatic or ARC modes such as heat-wait-search and iso-aging. In these modes the instrument and adjust for the heat loss to the sample container and allows users to run tests at a thermal inertia of one or any thermal inertia dictated by the user. Like a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) it can measure exotherms, endotherms and measure heat capacity. Unlike a DSC the MMC can also measure pressure and the larger gram-sized samples allow for sample addition, mixing for multiphase and multi-component systems. The instrument is also capable of measuring thermal runaway due to fire exposure much more accurately than in previous methods. A variety of test results will be provided showing the different applications in different operating modes.