Waters Expands Impact of UPLC Technology with New SFC, Process Development LC, and 2D LC Systems at Pittcon 2011

Waters Corporation has unveiled three new Waters® ACQUITY UPLC® Systems further extending the impact of sub-two micron separation technology to address targeted analytical challenges.

The addition of the Waters ACQUITY UltraPerformance Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (UPSFC™) System, the ACQUITY® UPLC System with 2D Technology, and the Patrol UPLC® Laboratory Analyzer further reinforces the innovative dominance of Waters’ family of ACQUITY UPLC solutions in separation science.

“While other companies strive to replicate Waters fundamental ACQUITY UPLC technology, we continue to work with our customers on extending UPLC’s reach into more applications throughout the product development and manufacturing process,” said Art Caputo, President of the Waters Division.

Caputo continued, “Our core responsibility is to answer the question: ‘What does it take for our customers to succeed?’ All our customers want high quality data to make crucial business or organizational decisions. Increasingly, they want this data faster so they can drive down costs. The core ACQUITY technology provides answers for scientists who seek to apply these success factors throughout their organizations.”

Industry First UPLC-Based SFC Analytical System

The Waters ACQUITY UPSFC System is a holistically designed analytical system combining the advantages of sub-2-µm particle technology and the efficiency of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). Built on proven Waters® UltraPerformance LC (UPLC) technology, this new system offers up to 10X shorter run times, reduces solvent usage by as much as 95%, and cuts the cost of analyses by as much as 99% while giving laboratories a greener alternative to normal phase chromatography for chiral and achiral separations.

Waters ACQUITY® UPSFC System enables scientists to conduct normal phase chromatographic separations using carbon dioxide as the primary mobile phase rather than expensive and toxic solvents saving laboratories tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of an instrument.
The newest member of Waters family of ACQUITY systems, the Waters ACQUITY UPSFC System offers laboratories significant advantages over traditional HPLC for routine UPSFC separations in research or regulated laboratories across many industries.

“In 2004, Waters revolutionized liquid chromatography with the introduction of sub-two micron UPLC separations resulting in significantly better data quality. Today, this proven and reliable technology offers that same potential for analytical supercritical fluid chromatography,” said Harbaksh Sidhu, General Manager, Waters SFC Operations. “As the newest member of Waters family of ACQUITY systems, the ACQUITY UPSFC System provides the same impressive separation, resolution, and speed attributes of UPLC with the outstanding green benefits of SFC.”

Using specially designed Viridis™ Columns the ACQUITY UPSFC System offers the ruggedness and dependability scientists are looking for, with the ease of use they’ve come to expect from liquid chromatography. The system is fully compatible with Waters industry-leading Empower™ and MassLynx™ informatics software and Waters UV and mass detectors.

ACQUITY UPLC With 2D Technology Tackles Complex Separations Challenges

Waters added the ACQUITY UPLC System with 2D Technology to its growing family of ACQUITY UPLC systems. Designed for chromatographers, 2D Technology for Waters ACQUITY UPLC Systems gives separations scientists added resolving power, particularly for samples that are hard to resolve by conventional means, while offering greater sensitivity and selectivity.

Based on Waters proven ACQUITY UPLC technology, the Waters ACQUITY UPLC System with 2D Technology gives scientists expert capability for trapping, heart cutting and parallel column regeneration to eliminate matrix effects, increase overall speed of analysis, enhance assay ruggedness, increase selectivity and sensitivity and use MS-incompatible solvents for the first dimension of separation.

PPD, Inc. (Richmond, VA) routinely employs two-dimensional chromatography for separations demanding extra speed, separations power, and sensitivity. “We have a total of 54 LC/MS systems and most are set up to run 2D chromatography. Eighty percent of the time, our scientists use a simple 2D approach to remove residual lipids from the sample matrix”, says Rand Jenkins, Scientific Director of Chromatography Sciences at PPD.

For more demanding assays requiring maximum selectivity and sensitivity, PPD scientists employ 2D heart-cutting techniques using two analytical columns to isolate the analyte peaks of interest. “The ability to perform two dimensional UPLC separations using Waters technology has enabled some of our most challenging assays that require ultra-high sensitivity while maintaining excellent ruggedness and instrument up-time“, says Jenkins.

The Waters ACQUITY UPLC System with 2D Technology features MassLynx Software for operational control and data management. It is a compatible front-end to Waters SYNAPT® and Xevo® brand mass spectrometers and quadrupole mass detectors.

First UPLC-Based Analyzer for the Process Development Laboratory

The Waters PATROL UPLC Laboratory Analyzer is designed to meet the needs of process development laboratories for the fast-turnaround of quality analytical data.

Built on proven Waters UltraPerformance LC® (UPLC®) technology, this new system solution provides scientists with mission-critical analytical data to guide decision-making at the earliest stages of manufacturing process development.

With the introduction of the Waters PATROL UPLC Laboratory Analyzer, scientists can now deploy Real-TIME LC™ in an automated manner for process-related data acquisition and decision making on two new fronts: on the manufacturing floor with the PATROL UPLC Process Analyzer and, now, in the process development laboratory.

“The path to better process management and lower cost manufacturing passes through the process development laboratory,” said Craig Dobbs, Program Manager, Process Analytics, Waters Division. “UPLC technology has proven itself over the past eight years in discovery, research, and development labs with its superior ability to detect and quantify components of complex reaction mixtures and fully characterize a candidate molecule by LC, LC/MS, and LC/MS/MS. For the first time the process development lab, enabled by the PATROL UPLC Laboratory Analyzer can leverage this historical QbD characterization data for direct design space development, guiding decisions to optimize the chemical synthesis process by monitoring CQAs through scale-up and pilot production to full-scale manufacturing.”

Designed and engineered to perform lab to pilot-scale online and atline reaction monitoring in the process development laboratory, the PATROL UPLC Laboratory Analyzer System provides accurate, reproducible, and precise chemical reaction mapping across the entire time course of the process. With Real-TIME LC™ and LC/MS information, scientists are able to fully characterize reaction kinetics and determine which process produces the desired endpoint.

A hallmark of the system is its dilution accuracy, linearity, and range. The technology behind this performance is the instrument’s new Process Sample Manager (PSM) which automatically extracts an online sample from a reactor or slipstream, performs sample prep, and sample injection - a process that once required the time and full attention of an analytical technician. In addition to online samples, the PSM can also accept and store up to 32 barcode labeled vials, which can be a combination of different standards, controls, and at-line samples.