O-Cube™ Ozonolysis Reinvented

The O-Cube is a ground breaking flow reactor designed to make ozonolysis and other low temperature reactions easier and safer to perform. The O-Cube makes ozonolysis safe enough to be performed in any lab environment by any level of chemist, so companies need not avoid or work around this important process any longer.

Ozonolysis has a number of advantages over conventional oxidation methods, including:

Quicker reactions with improved yields
Cleaner reactions and less side products
Does not require addition of water

Ozonolysis in Industry

Using ozonolysis, chemists can create alcohols, aldehydes, carboxylic acids, esters, and aldehydes quickly and efficiently. Ozonolysis has been used frequently in major drug syntheses such as (+)-Artemisinin, Indolizidine 251F, and D,L-Camptothecin and with fine chemical syntheses such as L-Isoxazolylalanine and Prostaglandin endoperoxides. So, if ozonolysis is faster and cleaner than other processes and used extensively in drug syntheses, then why is the technique avoided?

The main reason is the current technologies that are used to perform ozonolysis have inherent safety issues. The explosive ozonide is made in batch, where the temperature is difficult to control, so the possibilities of a runaway exotherm are increased. Additionally, there is no purpose-designed equipment at present that gives you complete control over the entire reaction process.

O-Cube Description

The O-Cube is the solution to these problems that the industry has been waiting for. Using the O-Cube, chemists can perform ozonolysis in complete safety while achieving the same, if not better, fast and clean results. The O-Cube works via the following:

A continuous-flow of substrate is combined with ozone, generated from an in-built ozonizer, at temperatures between room temperature and -25°C.
The ozonide formed is then immediately mixed with an oxidative or reductive quench reagent, under cooling, to generate the required product.
The product elutes from the reactor in minutes for quick analysis.
The ozone production may be turned off, so that other low temperature reactions may be performed.

Advantages

Safety – Only a small amount of the ozonide is generated and then quenched continuously. The temperature of the reaction is therefore more easily controlled and monitored.

Reaction Control – The accurate control of temperature in the O-Cube, coupled with a uniform temperature and mixing across the reaction zone means that the same experiment can be repeatedly performed at the same reaction parameters giving the same result.

Selectivity – The residence time of the substrate in the reactor can be very precisely controlled using flow rate down to the second. This allows users to target one of a multiple choice of products, by restricting the time of the substrate spent reacting.

Quick optimization - Temperature and flow rate may be changed “on the fly” for quick reaction optimization.
Versatile - Other low temperature reactions such as lithiation, diazotization, Grignard, and Wittig reactions may also be run on the reactor.

Ease of use - The software that controls the reactor is incredibly easy to use. The software has a timer function where the reaction may be set up and left to react without the need for user monitoring.

Convenience – The small footprint and the simplicity means the O-Cube may be used in any lab and by any chemist opening up ozonolysis to a new level of chemist.

Data export – All parameters of the experiment such as reactor temperature, quench temperature, pressure, gas flow, and flow rate may be monitored during the reaction and the data exported using a USB stick at the end of the experiment.