Chromatography Forum

Dear all, has anyone had a play with a Waters Acquity UPLC system?

I have. Its a pretty interesting system. One of my major reservations is the limitations in column types. They have the Xterra MS C18 right now. They told me that they are planning for RP18 type columns as well as phenyls.

I would definitely give it an eval before purchase. If it works well for you, its a definite gem with higher throughput and good approaches. BUt the column limitation is one of its greatest weaknesses (at this point).

Actually, I think you can use conventional columns with it as well (but obviously with the conventional limitations on flow/pressure)

Now there are 3 surface chemistries available, with a 4th one to follow soon.

All ACQUITY UPLC(TM) 1.7 micron packings are based on a new hybrid material with further improved pH stability compared to XTerra. They are called the ACQUITY UPLC(TM) BEH packings. BEH stands for bridged ethyl hybrid, which describes the chemistry of the particle istself.

Available surface chemistries are C18, C8, Shield RP18 (with embedded polar group) and phenyl (soon). The selection of C18 and Shield RP18 was done on purpose. In previous studies, we have shown that this approach maximizes the difference in selectivity between different reversed-phase packings.

Contact me if you want references.

Hi

I had the chance of evaluating a UPLC system towards the end of Oct 2004. I compared convential HPLC with UPLC. I used the following parameters to compare UPLC against HPLC: ret factors, resolution, column effiency, inj volume, run time etc. The system worked well with and increase in sensitivity, resolution, effiency, peak capacity etc. On average I found that the UPLC was about 4/5 times faster than convential HPLC. During my evaluation I found the following:

1.The system is easy to use but special precautions must be taken to ensure that the mobile phase and samples are filtered through 0.22µm filters. Sample “cleanupâ€