SAFC invests in new SMB facility

As part of an on-going US$6m expansion programme, SAFC is planning to install a new $150,000 Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) facility at its Fluka site in Switzerland.

The unit will be used for the separation of binary mixtures of chemical compounds, to produce chiral building blocks, unnatural amino acids and pharmaceutical compounds.

'The SMB equipment greatly enhances the portfolio of preparative chromatographic separations that we are able to offer our pharmaceutical and fine chemical customers. The unit is extremely versatile and can be used to solve a vast range of separation problems,' said Dr Stefan Gladow, SAFC's manager of r&d fine chemicals.

'We have already successfully separated a diastereomeric mixture of enzymatically synthesised chiral cyclic lactones for our r&d biochemical business unit and will shortly be separating racemates of unnatural amino acid derivatives.'

SAFC's investment consists of a Knauer SMB C916 instrument with four Knauer HPLC pumps with 10 and 50ml heads. The unit's column oven has a 64-port rotor valve for the installation of 4 to 16 columns with a diameter of 4cm. A degasser unit, two flowmeters and a PC control support the facility.

Formerly known as Sigma Aldrich Fine Chemicals, the company launched its new identity at the end of October 2004 to mark the integration of the companies it has acquired during the last 18 months. The acquisitions are performing well above expectations, said Ed Roullard, director, SAFC Europe, and the sales forces have now been integrated. One of the group's major strengths, he believes, is its project management capability, which has been built up significantly in recent months.

The only piece of the jigsaw still missing, according to Roullard, is large-scale capacity, but this will be addressed in the near future. At present the company has five projects in or about to enter Phase III, and the outcome of these will determine the shape of the future large-scale facility.