Waters introduces new SFC columns for purification

Waters has developed a new range of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) columns which are designed to facilitate purification of compounds in pharmaceutical laboratories.

The science company’s new Viridis SFC columns utilise carbon dioxide as the main supercritical mobile phase, in order to allow for faster and more efficient separations than those offered by conventional liquid chromatography.

This, it stated, will allow for a significant reduction in solvent purchase and disposal costs.

It also cited research from pharmaceuticals firm Pfizer, which showed that it has been able to benefit from improved productivity since introducing SFC technology at its Structure Elucidation Group laboratories.

Waters said: “SFC is becoming the preferred approach for the isolation and purification of target compounds at the milligram to multi-gram scale.”

Last month, the company published its financial breakdown for the 2009 fiscal year, during which its sales increased by three per cent year-on-year.