Transforming Chromatography

In North America:

Aurora SFC Systems, Inc.
1755 East Bayshore Road, Suite 25B
Redwood City, CA 94063
1-877-879-7321
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In Europe:

Chemputeam
9 Route des Jeunes
PO Box 1133
CH-1211 Geneva 26
Switzerland
Phone 41 22 360 3161
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Fine chemicals are pure, single chemical substances that are commercially produced with chemical reactions for highly specialized applications. Fine chemicals produced can be categorized into active pharmaceutical ingredients and their intermediates, biocides, and specialty chemicals for technical applications.

In chemical technology, a distinction is made between bulk chemicals, which are produced in massive quantities by standardized reactions, and fine chemicals, which are custom-produced in smaller quantities for special uses. There is a very large number of fine chemicals that are produced, and thus the chemistries of producing them need to be flexible, whereas the atom economy is not as critical as for bulk chemicals. Owing to the small volume and often-changing chemistry, fine chemicals production is more expensive, generates more waste and requires a higher research investment per kilogram. However, fine chemicals are produced in industrial quantities unlike research chemicals, which are produced only in the laboratory.

With the introduction of new drugs to the market, the chemical identities of pharmaceuticals and their intermediates change often, and they are also produced in small quantities, thus being fine chemicals. Active pharmaceutical ingredients are formulated in a separate factory, where they are compounded with inert pigments, solvents and excipients, and made into dosage forms. Fine chemicals manufacture of pharmaceuticals and intermediates needs to conform to the strict Good Manufacturing Practice standards, and is monitored by the food and drug authorities, particularly the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Biocides include pesticides, herbicides and other specialized chemicals that are used in agriculture to inhibit or kill pests and weeds and thus improve crop yields. New biocides are developed somewhat slower than new pharmaceuticals.

Specialty chemicals are produced for technical applications. Inks, performance-enhancing additives, special coatings, and photographic chemicals are common examples. They are generally sold based on differentiated performance-in-use characteristics instead of price per mass, the basis upon which fine chemicals are generally sold.

Lonza CEO Stefan Borgas has suggested that the growth rate of the industry will go from the 15-20% that it has been in the past decade to closer to 3-6% over the next five years. In order to remain competitive, increasing speed of analysis and decreasing the cost of analysis, may be necessary.

SFC is capable of rapid chemical separations, without the ultra high pressures now used in HPLC. The SFC module can convert a standard HPLC to an ultra high performance supercritical fluid chromatograph (UHPSFC). Typically, SFC separations utilize CO2 and alcohols, such as methanol, ethanol or isopropanol. The CO2 is recycled, coming from cement manufactures. Additionally, SFC eliminates the high cost of lab waste removal since the CO2 is vented and the alcohol waste is not mixed with water and may be easily incinerated.

Borgas went on to say that new innovations will be required to include green chemistry, elimination of solvents, and investigation into the use of different reagents that take the environment into consideration.

Petrochemicals are chemical products derived from petroleum. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sources such as corn or sugar cane.

Two petrochemical classes are olefins including ethylene and propylene, and aromatics including benzene, toluene and xylene isomers. Oil refineries produce olefins and aromatics by fluid catalytic cracking of petroleum fractions. Chemical plants produce olefins by steam cracking of natural gas liquids like ethane and propane. Aromatics are produced by catalytic reforming of naphtha. Olefins and aromatics are the building blocks for a wide range of materials such as solvents, detergents, and adhesives. Olefins are the basis for polymers and oligomers used in plastics, resins, fibers, elastomers, lubricants, and gels.

Two ASTM methodologies involve the use of supercritical fluid chromatography for the analysis of Aromatics in Diesel Fuel (ASTM 5186), and Olefins in Gasoline (ASTM 6550). This technique utilizes a flame ionization detector (see illustration).

Global ethylene and propylene production are ~110 million tonnes and ~65 million tonnes per annum respectively. Aromatics production is ~70 million tonnes. The largest petrochemical industries are located in the USA and Western Europe; however, major growth in new production capacity is in the Middle East and Asia. There is substantial inter-regional petrochemical trade.

Primary petrochemicals are divided into three groups depending on their chemical structure:

1. Olefins includes ethylene, propylene, and butadiene. Ethylene and propylene are important sources of industrial chemicals and plastics products. Butadiene is used in making synthetic rubber.
2. Aromatics includes benzene, toluene, and xylenes. Benzene is a raw material for dyes and synthetic detergents, and benzene and toluene for isocyanates MDI and TDI used in making polyurethanes. Manufacturers use xylenes to produce plastics and synthetic fibers.
3. Synthesis gas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen used to make ammonia and methanol. Ammonia is used to make the fertilizer urea and methanol is used as a solvent and chemical intermediate.

The prefix "petro-" is an arbitrary abbreviation of the word "petroleum"; since "petro-" is Ancient Greek for "rock" and "oleum" means "oil". Therefore, the etymologically correct term would be "oleochemicals". However, the term oleochemical is used to describe chemicals derived from plant and animal fats.

George Avalos
Technical Sales Specialist
Sales

George Avalos joined Aurora SFC Systems in 2011, after spending the last 11 years at Phenomenex Inc. as an Account Manager where he was an accomplished top sales leader. He has extensive experience selling HPLC, GC, SPE, and Preparative products to key accounts in many industries throughout the United States. 
George is well known for his excellent customer-focused skills.  He has always valued the importance of trust in relationship building while working with all customers.  He continues to foster those strong relationships with Aurora SFC Systems.
George was born and raised in Fresno, California, has a BS in Biology with an emphasis in biochemistry from San Diego State University and today resides in Hawthorne, California with his wife, Celinda and their three-year old son, Joaquin. 

Bob Nairn
Director
North American Sales

Robert Nairn, a graduate of the University of New Hampshire, has spent his career building Companies top-line revenue through Sales and Sales Management. His determination, intellect, and drive to succeed has served him well, both during his school years on an athletic scholarship and throughout his business career. 

In 1987, Bob joined Porton Instruments, a privately held start-up company with a new innovative state of the art protein sequencer.  He was the fifth employee and the only Sales person.  In his role as National Sales Manager he developed a team of professionals that captured better than 50% market share from Applied Biosystems the long time market leader.  The Company was successfully sold to Beckman Instruments in 1992.

While Beckman wanted Bob to continue in his role as VP of Sales for this division, the desire to build another company made the timing right.  Bob joined FormaVitrum, Inc, a Swiss Company, to introduce their products to the US market.  He then helped position Research Organics to secure their percentage of the fine chemicals market. He remained with them until Berger Instruments came calling.

Berger Instruments, a privately owned Delaware company, was started in 1996 to introduce Supercritical Fluid Chromatography instrumentation to the Pharma and Biotech markets.  The founders recognized Bob's capabilities, network within the marketplace and past successes in driving new business. Bob accepted the position of Equity Partner and of leading their new Sales group, and was the driving force of their success.  Berger was acquired by Mettler-Toledo in November of 2000.  Bob remained their National Sales Manager until 2005 when he and Terry Berger started the AccelaPure Corporation which utilized the SFC equipment that was developed by Berger Instruments to do analysis and purification services for the Pharma and Biotech industries.

The AccelaPure management team decided to sell AccelaPure to some Princeton University scientific personnel.

The core of the Berger Instruments company regrouped to start Aurora SFC Systems, Inc. in 2009; and this world class SFC team developed a revolutionary product called “Fusion” which interfaces with an HPLC and makes it capable of doing the world’s greatest Analytical SFC.  The company also plans on developing Preparative SFC equipment.  Bob again took the reins of VP, Sales.

Bob resides in Atlantic Highlands, NJ, and utilizes his Division 1 basketball skills to coach AAU basketball in his spare time and has won 7 Championships with 10 teams he has coached.

David A Boulton
Senior Field Service Specialist
Applications and Customer Education

Former Vice president of Technology & Operations with Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, he is an experienced entrepreneur and innovative chemical technologist. In 1996 he was a founding member of Coelacanth Corporation and was instrumental in the successful merger of Lexicon and Coelacanth, bringing drug discovery chemistry into Lexicon’s genetic target discovery engine. Prior to the start-up of Coelacanth, he was Senior Director of Automated Synthesis at ArQule, where as one of the first employees, he was credited with developing ArQule’s breakthrough chemical library automation platform. During fifteen years of R&D at Merck & Company in Medicinal Chemistry, he helped push the frontiers of technology as a founding member of the automated synthesis group. He has a wealth of practical experience in research facility management, design, and construction, in combination with extensive “hands on” knowledge of synthetic chemistry technology.

Jennifer Van Anda, Ph.D.
Senior Marketing Chemist
Applications and Customer Education

Jennifer received a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. She did a post-doctorate in the Pharmacology Department at Burroughs Wellcome. She joined Assagai Laboratories, an independent analytical and environmental lab, to be the State Racing Chemist for New Mexico and Arizona and director of the Environmental Lab. Subsequently, she joined Agilent Technologies, Chemical Analysis Group where she worked in a variety of positions. In 2000, she joined Berger Instruments/Mettler-Toledo as a Marketing Chemist. In 2006, Jennifer joined AstraZeneca to be Team Leader for the Purification Group working with Lead Optimization and Lead Generation. In 2010, she joined Aurora SFC Systems as an Application Chemist.

Denis Berger
Head Consultant
CHEMPUTEAM SA

Chemputeam SA is a company involved in R&D, services, support and consulting dedicated to customers from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, laboratory instrumentation and related industries, with specific expertise in data acquisition and mining, information sharing and knowledge management. Chemputeam SA and Denis Berger have been appointed as long term consultant for science and technology by several customers, including Mettler-Toledo AutoChem, Berger Instruments, Synlogic, Ibex Objects Systems, Siemens, HP, and is providing new drugs discovery expertise to many of the major pharmaceutical companies.

During the last 10 years, the main focus has been the scientific support and applications development using both analytical and preparative Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC).