How a LC Purification System can be adapted for different tasks and still be Affordable

This question was the starting point for developing a new type of preparative liquid chromatography equipment for purification tasks. Contichrom® process equipment from Knauer successfully combines the flexibility of batch HPLC systems with the efficiency and throughput of continuous chromatography systems.

Contichrom® is a preparative 2-column liquid chromatography system, designed for purifications in discovery, process development, and scale-up. The system allows the user to choose the most efficient LC technology (batch LC, CaptureSMB®, MCSGP, N-Rich®, or SMB) for a given separation challenge. Instead of requiring five different systems this can be achieved with a single equipment and control software.

Typical application areas for Contichrom range from FPLC separations of proteins to HPLC separations of pharmaceutical active ingredients.

Compared with other LC purification systems Contichrom doesn’t need large screening efforts for process development and optimisation. Instead you can start from a simple non-optimised batch process and easily switch to a superior countercurrent solvent gradient purification (MCSGP) process. This is made possible by the user-friendly Contichrom® lab control software.

The MCSGP process principle works with two columns rather than one. Through continuous column switching, impure side fractions of the target peak can be recycled and separated again, maximising extraction of the product. Yield and purity can be increased by 50%, while achieving up to 10-times higher throughput and a 70% reduction in solvent or buffer consumption.