A large-volume single-pass flow-through cell forin situneutron diffraction investigation of hydrothermal crystallization processes is reported. The cell is much more versatile than previous designs owing to the ability to control independently and precisely temperature (up to 673 K), pressure (up to 46 MPa), flow rate (0.01–10 ml min−1) and reaction-fluid volume (≥65 ml). Such versatility is realized by an innovative design consisting of a room-temperature and ambient-pressure external fluid supply module, a high-pressure reaction module which includes a high-temperature sample compartment enclosed in a vacuum furnace, and a room-temperature and high-pressure backpressure regulation module for pressure control. The cell provides a new avenue for studying various parameters of hydrothermal crystallizations independently,in situand in real time at extreme hydrothermal conditions (e.g.supercritical). The cell was successfully commissioned on the high-intensity powder diffractometer beamline, Wombat, at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation by investigating the effect of pressure on the hydrothermal pseudomorphic conversion from SrSO4(celestine) to SrCO3(strontianite) at a constant temperature of 473 K and flow rate of 5 ml min−1. The results show that the increase of pressure exerts a nonlinear effect on the conversion rate, which first increases with increasing pressure from 14 to 20 MPa, and then decreases when pressure further increases to 24 MPa.
Single-pass flow-through reaction cell for high-temperature and high-pressurein situneutron diffraction studies of hydrothermal crystallization processes