SFC/SFE Europe 2023
May 14, 2023
Short Course Information

Register Now

Course Description

This course will focus on fundamentals and advances in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) employing carbon dioxide-based mobile phases. Particular emphasis will be directed toward pharmaceuticals and other fields where SFC currently plays or will play a critical role such as lipidomics, specialty chemicals and polymers, biodiesel, foods and vitamins, natural products, and flavors/fragrances. Example applications in these areas will be used throughout the course as teaching illustrations. Attendees will gain the following knowledge:

• Fundamentals of CO2-based mobile phases – why do SFC?
• Practical advantages of SFC & SFE over GC-based and HPLC-based separations and liquid-based extraction – speed, cost, selectivity, etc.
• An understanding of SFC instrumentation, how it has improved over the years, and differences between SFC and HPLC equipment
• Method development in analytical-scale SFC and preparative-scale SFC - special considerations for scale-up
• Fundamentals of chiral SFC separations
• How to choose stationary phases for achiral and chiral SFC separations
• Which mixtures are suitable for SFC, and which mixtures may not be suitable?
• The role of modifiers/entrainers and additives in SFC and SFE separations
• Options for detection in SFC, with special emphasis on SFC/MS
• What are the latest developments and what is the future of SFC?

Target Audience

Anyone currently using GC, HPLC or other chromatographic techniques for analysis and/or purification and interested in learning how SFC can increase efficiency while reducing costs, or how SFC could be implemented as a complementary, orthogonal technique, will find this course of interest. This includes academic and industrial separation scientists, process chemists, laboratory and R&D managers in the pharmaceutical, specialty chemicals and polymers, food, lipidomics, biodiesel, natural products, flavors/fragrances, materials and medical research industries. Actual experience or knowledge of SFC is not required. Some knowledge of chromatographic principles is desirable.   

Biography of Course Instructors

J. David Pinkston is Technical Services Manager for Preservation Systems at Archer Daniels Midland Company. He’s been involved in the analytical uses of supercritical fluids for many years. David has been a member of the Green Chemistry Group Board of Directors since it was founded in 2007. He has used SFC, SFE, and related techniques to study personal care products, surfactants, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and foods, among other things. He’s an advocate for the use of supercritical fluids not only because of their environmental and cost-saving advantages, but because they provide technical advantages not easily obtained using conventional mobile phases or extraction fluids. Most recently, his interests have focused on oil/fat/lipid chemistry and oxidation prevention.

David received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University working in separations and mass spectrometry under the direction of J. Throck Watson and John Allison.

He was Chair of the ACS’s Division of Analytical Chemistry in 2002 – 2003, was the Division’s Program Chair for the Fall 2002 and Spring 2003 National ACS Meetings, and has served on the Executive Committee of the Subdivision of Chromatography and Separations Chemistry. David is Chair of the Lipid Oxidation & Quality Technical Division of the American Oil Chemists Society.  He has authored or co-authored over 60 publications and presented over 130 lectures - the majority of which are in the areas of SFC and SFC/MS. He also co-authored “Modern Supercritical Fluid Chromatography: Carbon Dioxide Containing Mobile Phases” with Larry Miller and Larry Taylor.  David has taught various versions of the SFC short course since the early 1990s. He loves downhill skiing, enjoys the challenges of winemaking, and is an avid cyclist.

Larry Miller is a Director in the Discovery Attribute Sciences group at Amgen in Thousand Oaks, CA.  He graduated with a BS degree from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and an MS from Roosevelt University. He has spent his career performing small molecule achiral and chiral purifications at the mg to multi-kg scale, utilizing preparative HPLC, steady state recycle (SSR), simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography, and supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC).  During his career, he spent 20 years at Searle/Pharmacia and has spent the last 19 years at Amgen   At Amgen he is responsible for analytical and purification support for discovery and purification support for development.  

Larry has over 40 peer-reviewed publications and over 45 presentations at scientific meetings.  He also co-authored “Modern Supercritical Fluid Chromatography: Carbon Dioxide Containing Mobile Phases” with David Pinkston and Larry Taylor.    Larry also serves as co-instructor for an SFC short course which has been held at numerous chromatography conferences in the United States, Europe, and Asia over the past fifteen years.  In addition, Larry is the current president of the Green Chemistry Group, a not-for-profit group that organizes the annual SFC conference

Caroline West is a full professor in analytical chemistry at the University of Orleans, France.

Her main scientific interests lie in fundamentals of chromatographic selectivity, both in the achiral and chiral modes mainly in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), but also in liquid chromatography (LC). She is also applying these methods to a variety of samples of pharmaceutical interest and natural products.

Caroline has authored more than 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and has presented about 100 lectures in national and international conferences and seminars. In 2015, she received the “LC-GC Emerging Leader in Chromatography” award from LC-GC North America and was recognized several times as one of the most influential people in analytical sciences by “The Analytical Scientist” journal (2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). In 2021, she was awarded the Jubilee medal from the British Chromatographic Society.
Apart from university teaching duties, Caroline has also contributed to many short courses and tutorials in SFC in international conferences (HPLC, HTC, ISC…) for young researchers and industry professionals.
She is also an advisory board member for several journals in separation science (e.g. Journal of Chromatography A, Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, Chromatographia).

Isabelle François is currently global product manager at Thar Process for the supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) technology platform. She is also taking care of business development for Thar in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Thar Process is a US based company that specializes in large scale CO2 based extraction and purification system manufacturing as well as R&D and toll processing.

Next to working for Thar Process, Isabelle is also the founder of Chromisa Scientific, a consultancy company based in Belgium. She supports academia as well as industry with demanding extraction, chromatography, purification and project management challenges, offering customization, training and support.

Isabelle holds a PhD in analytical chemistry (acquired in the group of Pat Sandra), and has been working with analytical and CO2 technologies since more than 15 years across many industries including pharma and cannabis. She has been awarded numerous times in the Powerlists of the magazine The Analytical Scientist eg as one of the most influential female scientists in the world in 2016. Isabelle is still closely connected to the scientific community, publishing and reviewing articles on a regular basis, and she is often invited as a speaker at scientific conferences.