Chromatography Forum

Hi everyone,

what HPLC pump would you recommand for analytical to semi-prep purpose? We plan to make bioguided fractionation of plant extracts and we just need the pump. What matters is the possibility of gradient runs for the cheapest price. Flow rate would be approximately 1-20 ml/min (4.6-20 mm column id).

Thanks for your advices,

best regards

You can get a whole purification unit/system, giving you the possibility of monitoring the UV signal, as well as conductivity and pH. The system’s name is ÄKTA prime plus. It’s getting even better; it comprises a fractionation module.
So, you get everything you need for conducting the task you mention, for a very reasonable price indeed.

http://www.gelifesciences.com/aptrix/up ... _primeplus

Best Regards

Thanks for your reply, but I just need the pump: we already have a fraction collector (Gilson) and a manual injection valve. Monitoring will be performed according to biological acitivity, and we have UHPLC-QTOF and NMR for compound identification.

The problem is that the UPLC can't get higher than 2 ml/min, which is too low for semi-prep applications.

Best,

I've always had good luck with LabAlliance pumps. You can get them (re-branded) through Chromtech. The ones you probably want to look at are the series I and the series III. Series I is a bit cheaper, series III comes with a pressure transducer. I think you can also find the series I with a pressure transducer, probably called the series I+, if you dig through their catalog. You can get it with a pump head that does 1-10 ml/min and goes up to around 6000 psi, or a 0-40 ml/min pump head that goes up to 650 psi (I think). The series I runs about $2500. We've got about 6 of them here, and one has been running 8 hours a day for over 6 years with no problems at all, and no maintenance. All the models have connections for voltage control as well as an rs232 port that allows control via a simple text protocol. The downsides are that the flow rate can be as much as 10% high if you don't give them enough back pressure, and they get a little bit noisy at higher flow rates.

Thanks for the info. Series I and III seem to be isocratic pumps, did you mean to couple 2 pumps to run gradients, or better buy the B2300 binary pump from LabAlliance? Do you know how much cost the latter? Many thanks

Oh, I didn't notice that you needed to do a gradient. You would have to couple two pumps (series I and III, two series I's, etc) and control them somehow. I've never used any of their gradient pumps before. I've used a series I and III together, and I've used a gradient former before a single pump. The software I use makes it pretty easy to form a gradient using two of those pumps. As to the price of their binary pumps, I have no idea.