Preparative supercritical fluid chromatography

Preparative Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (Prep-SFC) is presented here as it appeared historically: that is to say as the application of the supercritical fluids (SF) interesting properties to Preparative HPLC process. The advantages induced by the use of SF instead of liquid solvents are both practical and economical: the low solvent consumption of Prep-SFC avoids the storage of large quantities of solvent and considerably reduces the upstream and downstream processing costs of the solvent. The drawbacks of SF are both practical and economical too: SF processes are high pressure ones and, subsequently, investments costs are higher than HPLC's ones. Application examples illustrate the development of a separation method, Finally the main features of Prep-SFC economics are given to define more precisely the place of Prep-SFC as a complementary technique of Preparative HPLC.