The History of Preparative SFC

It is prudent to use columns of a length that just satisfies the requirements of the separation and no more in process scale SFC because the micro-particulate packings are so expensive. 

In 1977 Hartman and Klesper [7] described an SFC system with an open air fraction collector that was designed to be used with a low boiling point organic solvent. The authors were attempting to separate styrene oligomers preparatively by SFC. 

8 Scaling-up of Supercritical Fluid Chromatography to Large-Scale Applications 

Supercritical fluids have been used to extract and then chromatograph eicosapen-tanoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid esters from esterified fish oil by employing programmed extraction-elution with supercritical carbon dioxide [12]. 

In spite of the significance of the publications cited the technique of preparative SFC has received relatively little attention when compared with analytical SFC. The method has the potential capability of replacing normal phase preparative HPLC because when coupled with supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) it carries out the extraction, preconcentration and chromatographic fractionation in a single nm according to Saito et al. [13]. 

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