Reactor pressure

UCL's Christopher Ingold Laboratories might look as forbidding as a nuclear power station. But the reactor here has nothing nuclear about it. What's more, the pressure here is reassuringly low... because the reactor is switched off.

Reactors come in all shapes, sizes and purposes.

While in popular language the word typically refers to nuclear reactions, for scientists, reactors are simply vessels in which any kind of reaction takes place, whether that is chemical, biological, nuclear or anything else.

In this laboratory, the reactor is part of a large-scale facility for making nanoparticles. Part of the work of the Clean Materials Technology Group, this room-sized contraption is a step towards developing the technology for industrial scales, where these tiny particles serve valuable roles in fields as varied as medicine and manufacturing.  

Photo credit: O. Usher (UCL MAPS)

Links

• UCL Chemistry
• UCL Clean Materials Technology Group

High resolution images

Reactor pressure dial

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Pump valves

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