Investigation of Column Packing & Flow Profiles in Packed Chromatographic Columns
Abstract
Liquid chromatography is an important downstream operation in the health care, biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, and bioprocessing industries. Its high resolving power is utilized to capture valuable materials such as therapeutic proteins, antibodies, peptides, and nucleic acids. Column chromatography relates to a separation and/or purification technique in which a stationary "bed" of a packing medium or resin is contained within a rigid tube. The column efficiency is measured in terms of Number of plates and Asymmetry. Column Efficiency loss can occur during packing, during storage and during transportation. The detailed study has been done for column sizes 2.5 cm and 5 cm inner diameter to improve column efficiency to the customer by studying the impact of Frit thickness, number of adaptor vanes and the effect of column internal smoothness. Column efficiency improved (19-38%) with reducing frit thickness, (15-25%) with increasing number of vanes and 10% with reducing column internal roughness. With the improvements achieved we can deliver more stable prepacked columns to the end user.