Highlights of HPLC 2008: Part I - - Chromatography Online

Highlights of HPLC 2008: Part I

Aug 1, 2008
By: Ronald E. Majors
LCGC North America

The 32nd International Symposium on High Performance Liquid Phase Separations and Related Techniques, which alternates between Europe and North America, was held, for the second time in Baltimore, Maryland, May 10–16, 2008. More affectionately known as HPLC 2008, the symposium is the premier scientific event for bringing together the myriad techniques related to separations in liquid and supercritical fluid media. Co-chaired by Professors Georges Guiochon of the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) and Stephen Jacobson of Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana), HPLC 2008 assembled just under 1200 scientists from a total of 42 countries. This number includes vendor representatives from over 67 exhibitors for the three-day instrument, software, and consumables exhibition.

The five-day plus event had a total of 138 oral presentations, many given during simultaneous sessions, over 460 posters in sessions with 30 themes. With an ample social event schedule, 11 vendor workshops (some with free lunch), six tutorial educational sessions, two discussion sessions and 10 short courses, the latter held during the previous weekend, attendees had their hands full deciding how to allocate their time. The tutorials and discussions were particularly well attended with provocative titles such as "Is Silica Walking into the Sunset?," "Comprehensive 2D LC: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," and "Packed Columns vs. Monoliths: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Going?"

Obviously, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was the predominant technology in the technical sessions at the symposium. From a perusal of the poster and oral presentation abstracts, I broke down some of the major areas of coverage in this year's symposium. These tables are useful to spot trends in the technology and applications of liquid phase researchers in the world. Many of the topics that are currently "hot" in the separations sciences were introduced in this series.

Figure 1: (a) Graduate student Ken Broeckhoven (left)of the Free University of Brussels after receiving his first place Best Poster Award from Poster Chair Ron Majors (right). (b) Winner of the Second Best Poster, Pelin Yang of Dow Chemical (Midland, Michigan). (c) Winner of Third Best Poster, Petr Cesla of the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic.

Table I provides a rough breakdown of the coverage of liquid-phase technology and techniques in the separation sciences. Compared with HPLC 2007 (1,2), some definite shifts in technology emphasis were noted. Although column technology always leads the pack, this year, about a third of the columns' papers dealt with monoliths, with more emphasis this time around on polymeric-based monoliths which have less intellectual property protection compared to silica-based monoliths. Three other areas were "hot" in column technology this year: the continued interest in sub-2-μm porous packings with ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) being the latest buzzword; the increasing interest in hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) for the separation of polar analytes and; the new breed of superficially porous packings (also referred to as pellicular, porous layer beads, and fused core packings) that are said to rival the sub-2-μm particles in terms of column efficiency but with substantially lower pressure drops. Discussion sessions weighed on the virtues and tradeoffs of monoliths vs sub2-μm particles, vs. 2–3 μm particles vs. superficially porous particles. A well-covered topic was the use of 2D and comprehensive LC×LC, which had four oral sessions, a discussion session, and a tutorial devoted to it. With chromatographers encountering more complex samples, sometimes with thousands of compounds present, these multidimensional techniques are about the only way to tackle such mixtures.

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