New Preparative Chromatography Learning Tool: SFC Primer

Beginner’s Guide to Preparative Supercritical Fluid Chromatography

Preparative chromatography continues to be an important purification tool in pharmaceutical, fine chemical, natural product, and other laboratory workflows. In recent years, many laboratories have also begun to include Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) as part of their purification strategies.

In an effort to help scientists better understand this technology, a new learning tool is now available. Written by Waters scientist Jacquelyn Runco, this primer “Beginner’s Guide to Preparative Supercritical Fluid Chromatography” introduces users to SFC, describes the technologies used in SFC analyses, provides practical tips and techniques, shows several practical examples from method development to scaling from analytical to prep.

Chapters include:

• Introduction to SFx technology
• Introduction to prep SFC
• Enabling technology
• Diverse selectivity and applicability
• Method development
• Choosing a prep system
• Principals of scaling in prep SFC
• Example applications: Chiral and achiral purification
• Appendix A: CO₂ source
• Appendix B: CO₂ recycling
• Appendix C: Proper ventilation and lab monitoring

“SFC is Chromatography!” –Jacquelyn Runco

As Jacquelyn enthusiastically writes, “SFC IS CHROMATOGRAPHY! Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is a chromatographic technique that uses sub-critical (liquid) and supercritical CO₂ as the primary solvent in the mobile-phase, usually accompanied by an organic solvent. Like all chromatography, SFC separates components based upon the partitioning of analytes between a stationary phase (column) and a mobile-phase (solvent).

“There are many similarities between HPLC and SFC, for example: SFC can be run using both isocratic and gradient method conditions and is compatible with all standard detection techniques such as ultraviolet (UV), photodiode array (PDA), evaporative light scattering (ELS) and mass spectrometry (MS). ’

“The general Prep SFC workflow is the same as for HPLC involving method development, scale-up, fraction collection and purity analysis of the collected fractions. It is also comparable to RPLC in terms of recovery and purity, for some applications recovery is better in SFC while for others HPLC is the better solution.”

Resources:

• You can also order your hard copy now!
• For more information on the Waters Education Primer Series, please visit waters.com/primers
• Browse our application notes demonstrating the use of SFC