Each reactor was connected
to an on–off valve that could be used to depressurize it
independently from the others. The 10 reactors were submerged
in a single temperature-controlled water bath. Liquid CO2 (Messer,
Carbon dioxide 4.0, purity 99.990%) was fed into the reactors by a
volumetric pump (Lewa, mod. LCD1/M910s) that increased the
pressure to the desired processing levels, at a rate of about
6 MPa/min.