Image Recording and Processing Chemical Synthesis: Method Description and Demonstration

The reproducibility of chemical synthesis is of crucial importance for both chemical industry and research. The development of simple yet robust methods and algorithms that generate a set of data to help the community access their method's reproducibility is desirable. We report a method for obtaining, processing and analyzing recorded images, using scripting language Python 3, from any camera that allows continuous visualization and recording of a chemical synthesis. The method can be used to assert synthesis reproducibility, to capture reaction events that might elude the naked eye and later be isolated in posterior reactions, to refine synthesis parameters such as temperature, microwave power and time and also to understand chemical reactions during synthesis. The method was exemplified with two microwave-assisted synthesis, zinc sulfide and silver sulfide, processed at our lab and applied to videos from other authors.