Chemists Just Rearranged Atomic Bonds in a Single Molecule For The First Time

https://www.sciencealert.com ^ | MIKE MCRAE - 18 JULY 2022

[Tell It Right]

We’re definitely showing our age LOL

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Red Badger.

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[Red Badger]

Yes, but it involves Supernovas, so it’s not yet obtainable..................

[zeestephen]

Re: Supernovas

That does seem to be main road block for all things transformational.

The amount of energy required is always impractical.

[Red Badger]

The amount of energy required is always impractical.

For now.....................

[Hootowl99]

Amazing… It's normal for chemical reactions to be be less than perfect in terms of yielding the exact product desired. This leads to downstream product purification steps, which add to costs and is not perfectly efficient itself.

Usually this inefficiency yields junk side products that have to be removed. Another possibility is that an optical isomer formed. An optical isomer is the exact chemical composition as the desired product but reversed like looking in a mirror. Think right hand and left hand. The same but different. An optical isomer can be difficult if not impossible to purify from its opposite. I’ve only personally encountered this scenario one time in a highly expensive pharmaceutical production process.

[minnesota_bound]

A step towards replicators to make anything including replicators.

[Libloather]

[Red Badger]

Yes, I’ve heard of that.................I wonder if their properties are ‘opposite’?.....could be useful....................

[Hootowl99]

I think you're questioning if optical isomers can have different properties of some sort? Yes they can.

I only personally encountered this one time in a manufacturing process. This was in a batch crystallization reactor that produced a high value pharmaceutical product. All the reactants plus a solvent were dumped into the reactor at once then then the crystallization ran its course over something like 20 hours. At the end of 20 hours, the reactor was shut down, emptied, the crystals harvested and purified then pressed into prescription tablets.

The L and R optical isomers had identical physical properties so could not be separated via a purification step downstream of the reactor. Only one isomer was active for the therapeutic effect. So, too much of the opposite isomer would throw the reactor batch off spec and the entire batch junked.

Two things were happening at the same time in the reactor. First you had a chemical reaction that produced the product molecule from the feed products. This occurred in solution (A + B —> Product). The second action occurring was a physical change, i.e. crystallization.

It was during the crystallization that the L and R physical properties were created. The work I was doing was to increase the yield of the active isomer. An unexpected development is that I found that the batch time could be reduced by about 30% while increasing the ratio of the good isomer vs the undesirable isomer. Double win!

It was frustrating but due to extreme conservatism by FDA certifications, it took about 5 years to recertify the regulated process with the control technique I developed. Frustrating, yes. Necessary, double yes.

Note a hot take hidden in that last paragraph. About 5 years for a process certification via normal FDA quality control steps. Compare this to the fast track emergency authorization for the Covid “vaccines”.