New Technology for Chemistry Students at Nottingham Trent

Two chemistry teaching laboratories and a research laboratory at Nottingham Trent University have been completely re-equipped with Asynt DrySyn^® heating blocks, providing a cleaner, safer and more convenient alternative to the oil baths previously in use.

Carole Perry, Academic Team Leader for the School of Science and Technology, said: “We were using lots of oil baths in our laboratories and many of our first year students had little or no experience of using them. DrySyn blocks are much easier to use. This move also fits our strategy of ‘exposing’ students to the state-of-the-art equipment they will find when they leave the university for industry.”

DrySyn heating blocks offer a number of benefits including heating performance equivalent to or better than oil baths, a smaller footprint and excellent reaction visibility. The DrySyn Cool models, used with a standard laboratory chiller, were shown in independent tests to give better temperature control, faster cooling and better ability to cope with exotherms than a conventional ice bath.

Systems are available for heating (to 300ºC) or cooling (to -30ºC) single or multiple reaction vessels with volumes from 1ml to 5000ml. They are fully compatible with magnetic stirring, or the novel DrySyn Vortex Overhead Stirrer System can provide powerful directly driven stirring for up to 3 flasks. Over 20,000 DrySyn heating and cooling blocks have been supplied world wide in just three years.