Larry T. Taylor

The SFC conference tackled theory, economics, scale-up, and more.

The 9th International Symposium on Packed Column SFC (SFC 2015) was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, on 22–24 July 2015. Selected highlights of both the oral and poster SFC 2015 programmes are reviewed in this synopsis.

A review of the 8th International Symposium on Packed Column SFC (SFC 2014), which was held in Basel, Switzerland, on 8–10 October 2014.

Past, present, and future developments of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) are outlined. New vendor activity in terms of automation and hyphenation with chromatographic separations is discussed.

A review of the 7th International Symposium on Packed Column SFC (SFC 2013), which was held in Boston, Massachusetts, from July 10 to 12, 2013.

The past and future development of analytical supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) is traced in terms of experimental strategies, applications, vendor support, and timely acceptance of the existing technology.

Supercritical fluid chromatography has become a viable option for the separation scientist in diverse areas, and the field now seems more adequately described as an extension of HPLC, or perhaps as "carbon dioxide–based HPLC".

Supercritical fluid chromatography has become a viable option for the separation scientist in diverse areas, and the field now seems more adequately described as an extension of HPLC, or perhaps as "carbon dioxide–based HPLC."

Food analysis, column selection, HILIC-SFC, and more

For many years, packed column supercritical fluid chromatography (pcSFC) has proven to be extremely useful for chiral chromatography at both the analytical scale and preparative level.

The authors compare five bonded phases with bare silica for the SFC separation of a 19-component mixture of polar analytes.

SFC is now regarded as a modern normal phase LC technique prompting a re-examination of the role of bare silica as a useful stationary phase.

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has been practiced for approximately 50 years. SFC on packed columns for both qualitative and quantitative purposes underwent a renaissance in interest at the beginning of the 1990s when limitations of capillary SFC became obvious and important progress in composition gradient techniques for mixed mobile phases was achieved. Even with these instrumental improvements, wide acceptance of the technology was not forthcoming because the perception was that highly polar analytes were not soluble in carbon dioxide and thus were not separable. It is now apparent that the use of additives dramatically extends the range of solute polarity amenable to SFC.

The author looks at both the history and the recent developments in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC).

Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) has been practiced for approximately 50 years. SFC on packed columns for both qualitative and quantitative purposes underwent a renaissance in interest at the beginning of the 1990s when limitations of capillary SFC became obvious and important progress in composition gradient techniques for mixed mobile phases was achieved. Even with these instrumental improvements, wide acceptane of the technology was not forthcoming because the perception was that highly polar analytes were not soluble in carbon dioxide and thus were not separable. It is now apparent that the use of additives dramatically extends the range of solute polarity amenable to SFC.