Origins of Renewable
Column Separations
3.4.2.
Sequential Injection Renewable Separation (Grate 1996, Egorov 1999) was conceived at Pacific Northwest Nuclear Laboratories (PNNL) as a tool for automated separation of radionuclides using sorbent extraction resins. The instrument was based on conventional SI design and a renewable column, which was sandwiched between two four-port two-position valves (#1 and #2), that allowed a bead slurry to be auto-matically packed, and automatically discarded after the separation is complete. In a series of pioneering works on the separation of radioisotopes of Sr, Am,Tc, Pu, and Cm from aged nuclear waste, the authors highlighted key advantages of the SI-RS technique:
- elimination of carryover between separation runs
- material irreversibly retained on the column can be discarded
- flexibility in adjusting column packing from tens to several hundred microliters
- versatility in selecting column material allowing use of different sorbent extraction media.
In the same laboratory, purification of DNA using rRNA primer (Chandler 1999) was developed, using the SI-RS technique for the first time on the accumulation of biomolecules.
Grate, J. W., Strebin. R., Janata J., Egorov, O., Ruzicka, J., Anal. Chem. 68,33, (1996)
Egorov, O., O’Hara, M., Grate, J.W. Anal. Chem. 71, 345 (1999)
Grate, J. W., Egorov, O.B., Fiskum, S.K., Analyst, 124, 1143 (1999).
D.P. Chandler, B.L. Schuck, F.J. Brockman,C.J. Bruckner-Lea, Talanta, 49, 969, (1999)
