The development of the Purdue automated synthesis system
Abstract
Organic synthesis is an extremely labor intensive field. Much experimental effort is spent developing, analyzing, and optimizing reactions under various conditions (e.g. temperature, concentration.) This work tends to be tedious and repetitive, making it a prime target for automation. The Purdue Automated Synthesis System (PASS) performed automated, micro-scale organic synthesis and analysis. PASS consisted of: reactors, a solvent delivery system, a syringe cleaning system, a reagent stockroom, a GC, a HPLC, two Zymate robots, a sample vial dispenser station, a barcode station, a vortex mixer, a plug filtration station, and a vial transport system. An MS-DOS computer communicated with dedicated managerial computers to control the components of the system. The control software presented the user with a menu-driven interface to create the experiments that one wished the system to perform. Each experiment was checked by the system to verify that it could be executed correctly. After the experiment was checked and approved, the system automatically prepared the reaction in a reactor, extracted samples, and analyzed them. Several chemical systems were investigated with PASS to demonstrate its capabilities. The reaction parameters were: reaction time, concentration, addition rate, solvent effect, and temperature.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Fuchs, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Analytical chemistry
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.