Whether or not you celebrate holidays at this time of year, you will enjoy some of the 'gifts' in the monthly DCR Update already delivered this December. Coming on top of the November changes to the site, which made it accessible on all devices, update number 79 on 10 December 2014 included delivery of:
- One-click screening of solvent mixtures for synergistic peaks in solubility (see screenshot below); you can think of this as a solubility dashboard - very helpful for crystallization process design / solvent selection, as well as for chemists selecting solvents for reactions
- Easy solvent swap/switch simulation in the presence of 4 solvents and a non-volatile solute; this release includes more flexibility in defining end-point composition targets and setting jacket temperature during distillation
- Updates to a series of our 'simple' reaction models; these are now in the new standard format, with Start here tab, Help and process scheme included, with clear documentation of user inputs and model outputs. These features are very popular with users that have been away from DynoChem for a little while and need a quick refresher before starting a new project
- Another enhancement in our reaction calorimetry / process safety training - an exercise about generating stronger and more accurate safety statements using TMR (time to maximum rate) response surfaces.
Automated solvent screen*: This enhancement was promised in our paper on solubility at the AIChE Annual Meeting in November, which is now also available to download from DCR.
We hope that you can find time to review these and other enhancements to our model library and as always would love to hear your feedback via any communications channel that is convenient for you.
* In deference to our many users still operating on Excel 2007 or older, we decided to implement this feature using standard Excel plots for visualization (rather than Sparklines, which require Excel 2010 at your end).