CondenSyn® Evaluation:

“Now that we have them, I tend to use the CondenSyn® for any reflux situation. I’ve successfully refluxed pyridine, DMF, and THF with them with no problems. I have not used DCM or diethyl ether with these yet, but refluxing in those lower boiling point solvents is not incredibly common for my work.

To give you an idea of time of use, I used it last week and the two weeks before for an overnight reflux (>12 hr) and my colleague has used one for a long reflux in acetone for >3 days; both situations had zero problems. A typical week, however, would not have an overnight reflux and I’d be looking at an avg. of ~5 hr of usage (some weeks I don’t use it at all, and some weeks I use it many days a week). Combined with more than one chemist using these, they get relatively steady use in our lab space. Earlier in my studies, I would reflux every day and I wish I had the CondenSyn then; it would have made my experiments less cumbersome to set up.

I would say my top three favorite things about them are all related to their waterless design: no wasting water, no fear of flooding fume hood for long/overnight refluxes, and no fear of water flow stopping or slowing down to an ineffective flow rate during a reflux.”

Shawn D. Nelson Jr., Harvard University, Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Stuart L. Schreiber Research Laboratory, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Reference: ASY-EV-137