Development of Supercritical Fluid Extraction Coupled to Comprehensive Two-dimensional Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFE-SFC¥SFC)

Supercritical fluid extraction was coupled to comprehensive two-dimensional supercritical fluid chromatography with conventional packed columns. With this system, three modes of operations were feasible, such as SFE-SFC, SFC×SFC, and SFE-SFC×SFC. The operations for valve switching and data acquisition were automated using in-house software. In order to evaluate the present system, SFE-SFC for polymer additives in polypropylene, SFC×SFC for a mixture of benzene derivatives with different polarities, and SFE-SFC×SFC for styrene oligomers in polystyrene were performed. With SFE-SFC×SFC, diastereomers were resolved for linear tetramers and pentamers as well as trimers with the tetraline moiety.