Prep-LC to Flash Chromatography Conversion?

[doctorbim]

Hi everyone,
I'm looking at a paper (https://www.dropbox.com/s/zaap5o4vqcr7n ... 6.pdf?dl=0) that performed isolation of natural polymers (proanthocyanidins) based on their degree of polymerization using a diol preparative column with a 100um particle size. I don't have prep-LC experience, but I've been using a flash chromatography system to do fractionation of natural products. Does anyone with experience using these two systems think it's possible to use a diol flash cartridge with similar or smaller particle size to achieve a reasonably similar resolution as in this paper? I'm referring to the chromatogram in figure 5. The company I'm looking into (Interchim) is offering samples of these cartridges down to a particle size of 15um, but also has 30 and 50um. I'm not sure if there are any other factors coming into play that effects resolution between the preparative columns and flash cartridges.
Thanks in advance for any advice!

[tom jupille]

I'm not sure if there are any other factors coming into play that effects resolution between the preparative columns and flash cartridges.

The "physics" of the separation (effect on band width) should be comparable between the two systems; smaller particles will generally be better, but that may be cancelled out by the quality of the packing; in any case you should be in the same ballpark.

The wild card is the "chemistry" of the separation, which may not be the same between the prep column and the flash column. For that matter, it might not be the same between two prep columns from different manufacturers. For a separation based on dp, chemistry differences might not matter much, but the only way to know for sure is to try it.

[doctorbim]

Thanks for the reply, Tom. Hopefully, I'll be getting some samples either this week or the next using the same phase chemistry and smaller particle size. I'll try and update with chromatograms so it can be known to anyone lurking on these forums in the future.