How Flexibility and Process Economics Can be Combined in one LC System

This question was the starting point for developing a new type of preparative liquid chromatography equipment for purification tasks.

Contichrom® process equipment 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 discovery, process development, and scale-up. The system offers great flexibility for all process choices (batch, SMB, MCSGP, multi-column) with a single equipment and control software.

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, containing product are recycled internally, thus 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.