How to simulate patent benchmark: enzymatic cannabinoid synthesis (us9359625b2)
Real patent replication: US9359625B2's THCA-synthase-catalyzed conversion of cannabigerolic acid (CBGA) into either THCA or CBCA depending on operating pH — closing the genuine enzyme-kinetics gap this session's fact-check found (only Monod biomass-growth kinetics existed anywhere in MaximaLabs, no Michaelis-Menten). The patent's own disclosed pH-selectivity data anchors this model: it reports 'catalysis at a lower pH... favored THCA... while... neutral pH... favored CBCA,' a ~10:1 THCA:CBCA ratio at pH 5.0, and CBCA dominant at pH 7.0 — fit here as a single-ionizable-group pH-titration switch (pKa_switch=6.0), which reproduces the reported 10:1 ratio at pH 5.0 exactly (that's how pKa_switch was chosen) and gives ~10:1 CBCA:THCA at pH 7.0 (matching the patent's 'CBCA exclusively' qualitatively, not to an exact published ratio, since the patent gives no numeric ratio at pH 7.0 to match). Reactor volume is sized to clear the patent's own disclosed '>20% conversion' commercial threshold (reaches ~25.0% here).
- 1Open the ready-made model
Open the "Patent benchmark: enzymatic cannabinoid synthesis (US9359625B2)" model in the MaximaLabs workspace — no install, no license. It loads live on the canvas, ready to edit and run.
- 2Confirm the thermodynamics
This process is modeled with the BRINE property package over water, cbga, thca, cbca — already selected, so the phase equilibrium and enthalpy are physically consistent from the first run.
- 3Review the flowsheet
The flowsheet chains Synthase Reactor. Every block is a real, solvable unit op you can reconfigure on the canvas.
- 4Run the simulation
Click Run. The deterministic solver converges the material and energy balances (recycles included) and fills the live stream table — the AI never invents a number.
- 5Read the results and iterate
Inspect the converged streams, tweak a spec, and re-run — or ask the AI copilot to explain a result or diagnose a failed solve in plain English.
- Thermodynamics
- BRINE
- Components
- water, cbga, thca, cbca
- Unit operations
- Synthase Reactor
Opens live on the canvas — free, no install.
Explore the model & flowsheetModeling assumptions & limitations
What this model captures, and what it deliberately does not — from the engineers who built it.
- 1The patent discloses no Km/kcat, so Vmax/Km are illustrative screening values consistent with the reported conversion/selectivity, not independently measured enzyme kinetics — see the Patent Benchmarks docs page.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the Patent benchmark: enzymatic cannabinoid synthesis (US9359625B2) model simulate?
- Real patent replication: US9359625B2's THCA-synthase-catalyzed conversion of cannabigerolic acid (CBGA) into either THCA or CBCA depending on operating pH — closing the genuine enzyme-kinetics gap this session's fact-check found (only Monod biomass-growth kinetics existed anywhere in MaximaLabs, no Michaelis-Menten). The patent's own disclosed pH-selectivity data anchors this model: it reports 'catalysis at a lower pH... favored THCA... while... neutral pH... favored CBCA,' a ~10:1 THCA:CBCA ratio at pH 5.0, and CBCA dominant at pH 7.0 — fit here as a single-ionizable-group pH-titration switch (pKa_switch=6.0), which reproduces the reported 10:1 ratio at pH 5.0 exactly (that's how pKa_switch was chosen) and gives ~10:1 CBCA:THCA at pH 7.0 (matching the patent's 'CBCA exclusively' qualitatively, not to an exact published ratio, since the patent gives no numeric ratio at pH 7.0 to match). Reactor volume is sized to clear the patent's own disclosed '>20% conversion' commercial threshold (reaches ~25.0% here).
- Which thermodynamic method does it use?
- The BRINE property package, over water, cbga, thca, cbca — already selected. You can switch the method on the canvas before running.
- Which unit operations are in the flowsheet?
- It chains Synthase Reactor. Every block is a real, solvable unit operation you can reconfigure, add to, or remove.
- Do I need to install software or buy a license?
- No. Patent benchmark: enzymatic cannabinoid synthesis (US9359625B2) runs entirely in your browser on MaximaLabs — free, no install, no license. Open the model to load it live and run the deterministic solver.
More guides like this
Patent benchmark: methyl lactate synthesis (CN104628563A)
Real patent replication, not an invented process: CN104628563A's acid-catalyzed lactate-ester route — lactic acid esterified with excess methanol, then purified by vacuum distillation — reproduced here as a continuous flowsheet. The patent's own worked methyl-lactate example reports 98.8% esterification conversion and 99.6% product purity at 120 degC/3h. This flowsheet's reactor conversion is set directly to the patent's reported 98.8% (not fitted); the vacuum column (0.2 atm, matching the patent's vacuum-distillation purification step) then splits the methanol and reaction water off the ester completely — zero methyl lactate leaves overhead — and delivers 97.8 mol% methyl lactate in the bottoms at 389.9 K. The property method is the whole story here, exactly as it was on the sulfolane extractive column. Written on Peng-Robinson, this example did not converge at all: every pair in a methanol / water / lactic-acid / methyl-lactate mixture is hydrogen-bonding, which van der Waals mixing cannot represent, and the column returned a partial profile carrying 2.60 mol/s of methyl lactate out of a column fed 1.98 — 32% more product than the reactor made, a 0.26 component-balance residual. (That wrong profile is where this example's previously-published 98.75% purity was read from; the number was retracted at the test level and is now corrected here.) A plain activity model cannot be used either, for a data reason rather than a physics one: neither lactic acid nor methyl lactate carries a regressed ideal-gas-Cp correlation, and the gamma-phi enthalpy path raises on that where a cubic quietly falls back to a corresponding-states estimate. PSRK is a cubic whose mixing is driven by UNIFAC, so it has both — and it converges to a 2.7e-06 component-balance residual, with methyl lactate and lactic acid each leaving in exactly the amount the reactor made.
Patent benchmark: gas fermentation to single-cell protein (JP2024028821A)
The gas-fermentation process class JP2024028821A describes: hydrogen-oxidizing chemolithoautotrophic bacteria (the patent names Cupriavidus necator and Rhodococcus opacus strains) fixing CO₂ using H₂ as the electron donor to grow single-cell protein biomass. Built here with real physics closing two genuine gaps this session's fact-check found missing: gas-liquid mass transfer (Henry's-law dissolution + a volumetric kLa driving the H₂ dissolution rate) and chemolithoautotrophic growth stoichiometry (McCarty's electron-balance method combining the H₂-oxidation, O₂-reduction, and C₅H₇O₂N cell-synthesis half-reactions) — not a Monod-on-dissolved-substrate shortcut repurposed for a gas feed.
Patent benchmark: selective C3 diene/acetylene hydrogenation (US6495732B1)
Real patent replication: US6495732B1's palladium-catalyzed selective hydrogenation of a cracked-gas C₃ stream, removing methylacetylene (propyne) and propadiene down to trace levels while leaving propylene and propane untouched — the patent's own Example 1 feed (82.7 mol% propylene, 2.37% methylacetylene, 1.30% propadiene) reacted here to '>99.5% removal of both dienes/acetylenes, no propylene-to-propane over-hydrogenation' (propane's mole fraction is unchanged before/after — the actual selectivity claim the patent is about).
Chiral API purification: continuous SMB chromatography
A racemic active pharmaceutical ingredient (R/S enantiomers, dilute in ethanol eluent) is resolved continuously by simulated moving bed chromatography — the workhorse of chiral-drug manufacture that legacy steady-state flowsheet simulators have no native model for (engineers script it in MATLAB). This uses the native SMB unit op, which solves the standard steady-state True Moving Bed equivalent: a 4-zone counter-current equilibrium-stage cascade whose zone flow-rate ratios sit inside the triangle-theory separation region, so the more-retained enantiomer reports to the extract and the other to the raffinate — the separation is driven by the chiral adsorption selectivity (the two enantiomers are otherwise thermodynamically identical).
Substrate-inhibited fermenter (Haldane kinetics)
A continuous chemostat where growth is genuinely inhibited at high substrate concentration — the real Haldane mechanism (mu = mu_max*S/(Ks + S + S^2/Ki)), a native solver kinetics option (params['ki']), not a decorative custom block (custom_block structurally can't change stream composition, so faking this through one would misrepresent the reactor's actual material balance). At the same dilution rate a plain Monod fermenter would consume nearly all the feed substrate; here more substrate survives unconverted and less biomass forms, because growth is suppressed in this concentration range — the whole point of modeling inhibition at all. A strongly inhibitory Ki can also make a nominally achievable dilution rate (D < mu_max) physically unreachable and the reactor washes out, since the Haldane mu(S) curve peaks at a finite S and falls again at higher S.
Superheated-steam drying loop with MVR heat recovery
A wet cake is dried in a superheated-steam dryer (steam as the drying medium instead of hot air), and the evaporated moisture — pure steam — is recovered by mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) plus a trim superheater into high-grade superheated steam that reheats the recirculating drying medium. Superheated-steam drying is the energy-efficient route for biofuel and food solids (distillers' grains, beet pulp, lignite): because the drying atmosphere is steam, the evaporated water leaves as more steam whose latent heat is recompressed and reused, instead of being lost in a humid exhaust.