PREPARATIVE SUPERCRITICAL-FLUID CHROMATOGRAPHY

Preparative Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (Prep-SFC) is presented here as it appeared historically: that is to say as the application o f the supercritical fluids (SF) interesting properties to Preparative HPLC process. The advantages induced by the use of SF instead of liqui d solvents are both practical and economical: the low solvent consumpt ion of Prep-SFC avoids the storage of large quantities of solvent and considerably reduces the upstream and downstream processing costs of t he solvent. The drawbacks of SF are both practical and economical too: SF processes are high pressure ones and, subsequently, investments co sts are higher than HPLC's ones. Application examples illustrate the d evelopment of a separation method, Finally the main features of Prep-S FC economics are given to define more precisely the place of Prep-SFC as a complementary technique of Preparative HPLC.