Exploring Achiral Separation with Green Super Critical Fluid Chromatography

For several years, a large amount of research has been conducted in the search for a universal achiral SFC column. This universal column would be the SFC equivalent to the C18 column for reversed phase chromatography. These efforts have evaluated long lists of probes, many forms of column chemistry, and employed sophisticated statistical treatment of screening data. However, to date there is still no magic universal column for SFC. A universal column for achiral SFC applications would be convenient but does SFC need to have a universal column? Chiral chromatography in the pharmaceutical industry can be credited with shaping the entire SFC industry into its current position. Chiral chromatography does not have a universal column. SFC has excelled in this separation science niche because it is particularly effective at screening multiple columns and different eluent compositions. The same approach can be applied to achiral chromatography. SFC can be effectively applied to achiral applications when a limited set of columns are known to be applicable for the diverse range of compounds suitable for SFC. The work presented here will discuss the development of achiral applications for SFC. The focus will be on compounds relevant to the pharmaceutical industry. Columns typically utilized for normal phase, reversed phase, and chiral applications will be used for achiral SFC applications.