Chromatography: continuous

Continuous Chromatography in the Life Science Industries

In most cases, a continuous process can dramatically improve separation efficiency, production capacity and thus reduce purification cost, compared to batch chromatography. This is particularly important for industrial applications of preparative chromatography.

In recent years, the tremendous development of biotechnology, resulting in the production of more and more new active compounds (purified sugars, enzymes, peptides, antibiotics...), and the more stringent constraints regarding product purity (e.g. optical isomers) in drug manufacture have been the cause of an intensifying demand for separation technologies.

Since the 70’s Applexion successfully implemented numerous production-scale simulated moving bed (SMB) systems for the industrial separation of glucose and fructose, the purification of polyols, desalting of betaine, etc. Recently, Applexion introduced a more powerful technology, called sequential SMB or SSMB for such applications. Click here to access Applexion continuous technologies.

Novasep SAS pioneered the simulated moving bed (SMB) technology in the pharmaceutical industry, with laboratory-scale systems in 1990 and first industrial systems in 1997. Through the development of powerful computer modeling tools, Novasep SAS is able to optimize complex (non linear, multi-component) separations.
Several APIs are now produced at large scale (10’s tons to 100’s tons per year) using Novasep Process technologies, including SMB and more recently, Varicol® . Click here to access Novasep continuous technologies.

Principle of operation
 
Continuous chromatography involves the simultaneous use of several columns. Simulating Moving Bed (SMB), the basic continuous chromatographic technology simulates a counter-current contact between a solid and a mobile phase, as shown in the figure below: