Applications of Capillary Supercritical Fluid Chromatography-Supercritical Fluid Extraction to Natural Products

Capillary supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is uniquely suited for the separation of complex mixtures of natural products having nonpolar to moderately polar components with a molecular weight range of 100–1000 Daltons. This study describes several generic separation problems where SFC, or SFC coupled with micro-supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), can be utilized to the analyst's advantage. For example, capillary SFC can be used to separate the analytes of Interest from a relatively nonvolatile sample matrix without resorting to sample preparation prior to chromatography. Other applications of capillary SFC include the separation of reaction products from higher molecular weight starting materials and the deformulation of commercial products. Capillary SFC, when coupled with micro-scale SFE also permits the characterization of small samples, such as portions of single seeds and extractables from single, live Insects.