More than liquid liquid chromatography

Lilichro

PRODUCT

About chromatography

Chromatography is a surgical knife of active ingredient purification. It is a precise but expensive technique. Its small-scale use (analytical) is widespread. Industrial scale applications have been limited due to high cost requirements. The only industrial solution was liquid-solid chromatography (prepLC) until 2015. This was when the first industrial CPC (Centrifugal Partition Chromatography as liquid-liquid countercurrent chromatograph) appeared as a paradigm-shifting milestone.

LiLiChro was stablished to turn the founder’s new ideas into reality. The concept places liquid-liquid chromatography on a completely new basic.
The main focus is on increasing efficiency and throughput.

Technological background

CPC is a commonly used chromatography technique in laboratory scale. Biphasic system development is quick and easy. Scale-up is well determined and can be done much faster than in case of conventional prepLC. Cost-effectiveness, industrialization, automation, and solvent recycling have been the key issues of the industrial solution of CPC.

CPC as liquid-liquid chromatography technique and HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography) are similar in several respects. They share the same fundamental mechanism (separation of solutes), the same goal (separation, purification), and the same ancillary techniques (pumps, injectors, detectors).

Process

The simple separation funnel is the perfect analogy for liquid-liquid chromatography methods. The basic rule is that compounds can be separated by their different partition coefficients in a biphasic mixture.

If the compounds look very alike, they are similar, let’s say isomers, epimers, or other – than this separation funnel is not suitable. It will give low separation or low yield. Repeating the extraction can increase the separation, and therefore, yield; however after 3-4 mixing it becomes a boring and complicated process. That’s why liquid-liquid chromatography is invented.

Variants

Uniquely, LiLiChro has extended this range in both directions with mg-scale and ton-scale.

Why is it good to have an mg-scale device?

The LLC, in a unique way in chromatography, is very easy to scale up (unlike prepLC). On several occasions we faced problems where we had very little amount of material available. With the smallest device available until now (100ml cell volume), 1-2g of sample is needed for a feasibility study.
The Lilichro, and the world’s smallest instrument, works with a minilili 20ml cell volume and a flow rate of 1-2 ml/min, and is therefore often comparable to a conventional analytical HPLC. This is a big step forward for LLC.

Our prepLLC device, Lilichro prep, on the other hand, has a cell volume of 100 litres – five times larger than the largest unit ever created. The completely redesigned cell system has also greatly increased efficiency, raising the monthly purifiable volume to 0.5-2T.

Totally new cells

The reinvented cell design has increased efficiency by an order of magnitude compared to the old cells.

Totally new rotor

Due to the redesigned rotor structure, the pressure drop in the device has been greatly reduced, so the pressure drop of 50-100 bar that was previously experienced, is only 10-30 bar on the new rotor.

Totally new rotary-union

The constant need for seal replacement has been eliminated.

Totally new mixer-settler

Two-phase production is always a challenge on an industrial scale. A two-phase system must first be mixed and then separated in order to start the separation process. At a flow rate of 20 l/min we had to rethink this process as well. We are proud that the new system is capable of feeding the unit continuously and safely.

Product advantages

No expensive stationary phase
Simple scale-up
Fast commissioning
Easy handling
Published biphase for more than 500 molecule types
Insensitive to different incoming base materials (plant extracts preferred)

About us

Experienced team

The team members have been working in the field of chromatography for 12-40 years. The analytical team has extensive HPLC experience, and the prep team has 16 years of prepLC and prepLLC experience.

Our vision is clear: to create a family of devices that will maximise the benefits for prepLLC users. Solid support and a wide range of experience.