CAMILE system

An extruder for a polymer was controlled by a microprocessor based data acquisition and control system. The CAMILE system (Control And Monitoring Interface for Laboratory Experiments) connects the sensors and control elements of the extruder to a host MS-DOS computer. While a variety of variables are measured and controlled, this paper will consider only temperature control. 

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF CHE-0112631), a New Faculty Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and a Research Innovation Award from the Research Corporation. During the course of writing this chapter, the author benefited from stimulating discussions with the participants of two workshops on chemical reaction dynamics in complex systems, at Kobe University and at Kyoto University in October 2003, which were sponsored by the Japan-U.S. Cooperative Science Program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Yukawa Institute at Kyoto University, and the Inoue Foundation for Science. 

Reaction pressure was maintained with a dome-loaded back-pressure regulator (Circle Seal Controls). All heated zones were controlled and monitored with a Camile 2500 data acquisition system (Camile Products). Products were analyzed online by gas chromatography with an HP 5890 II GC, equipped with an FID, and a DB-Petro 100 m column (J W Scientific), operated at 35° C for 30 min, ramped at 1.5°/min to 100° C, 5°/min to 250° C for 15 min. An alkylate reference standard (Supelco) allowed identification of the trimethylpentanes (TMP) and dimethylhexanes (DMH). The combined mass of TMP and DMH is referred to hereafter as the alkylate product . As discussed elsewhere [19], propane, an impurity in the isobutane feed, was used as an internal standard for butene conversion calculations. Since isomerization from 1-butene to 2-butene isomers is rapid over acidic catalysts, reported conversion is for all butene isomers to C5 and higher products. Isobutylene formation was not observed under any conditions. 

Pierre Camille Lacaze, Laboratoire Interfaces Traitements et Dynamique des Systemes (ITODYS), UMR 7086, CNRS -Universite Denis Diderot Paris, Paris, France. 

Camile 2000 control system and a dual temperature Neslab DC-25 unit. A Lightnin model L1U08F mixer was used to control agitation speed. The mixer shaft... 

---