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May / June 2013
Pittcon Conference & Expo Philadelphia, USA
Technical Programme, March 17-21, 2013
Pittcon 2013 saw a return of the convention to the North of the USA and a first time visit to Philadelphia. The focus of this report will be the technical programme, the contents of the exhibition being covered extensively elsewhere (Ron Majors in LC.GC). Apart from the vast exhibition, there would be in the order of 25 oral presentation technical sessions in parallel each morning or afternoon plus manufacturer’s workshops, courses and posters. Pre-conceived notions of poorly attended technical sessions featuring mainly commercially- orientated talks with the main focus on the exhibition with vendors striking deals with one another were soon dispelled. The oral technical sessions were generally well attended. There was standing room only for sessions on UHPLC and 2D-LC and late on Thursday afternoon there was still a very good crowd for an SFC session. As well as commercial speakers, there was a string of academic separation scientist luminaries (e.g. Jorgenson, Guiochon, Schonmakers, Lee, not to mention Armstrong doing a short course on ionic liquids). Nor was this solely an American event with attendees from as far afield as Tasmania, Japan, China, Austria / Germany and India.
The event ran from Sunday 17th March to Thursday 21st March. On the Sunday afternoon, it was possible to catch the tail-end of the session on Liquid Chromatography: Columns which unfortunately meant missing Liquid Chromatography: Fundamentals. While there were >20 parallel sessions, if sticking to liquid chromatography then usually it was a choice of one out of two sessions but given the enormity of the venue it was not always possible to switch between sessions. Anyhow, the talk on “A Simple Graphical Representation of Column Selectivity in Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography” was being given, not by Mohammed Ibrahim, the listed speaker but by a stand-in, presumably Charles Lucy the supervisor. Borrowing from the much followed approach of Neue for reversed-phase materials it was shown how phases used for HILIC could be conveniently characterised with respect to selectivity and retentivity without having to resort to principal components analysis. Probe molecules were selected, to pick out retentivity differences arising from ion-exchange or hydrophilic partition with the data being plotted with retention for ion-exchange probes v that for hydrophilic retention probes. Distinct groupings of types of phase were clearly identified. This approach has been overdone for reversed-phase especially since for real pharmaceutical molecules hydrophobic interaction generally dominates far more than for especially selected probe molecules. However, for HILIC there will be a clear distinction between those that operate through ion-exchange and those that do not and, judging from the exhibition, there are already a large number of different types
of phase that are being branded as being HILIC phases. The authors should be commended on getting in early in what will be a growth industry. Also in this session, James Treadway, a Jorgenson student, presented on “Thin-Shell Micron-Sized Superficially Porous Particles for Liquid Chromatography”. This work had not fully come to fruition but there was enough to suggest that Treadway himself has a good future in separation science. This lecture was one of two which unfortunately clashed with talks of
Phenomenex’s new 1.3 µm core shell particle and on selectivity differences between different types of carbon phases.
The first session on Monday, and every day, started at 08/00. Crazy things like this tend to happen in the USA but in this case there was a good point. With the morning technical oral sessions finishing at 11.00, attendees could have a clear three hours at the exhibition before the afternoon sessions started at 14.00. On the morning of Monday 18th March, competing for attention with the likes of “Homeland Security: Analysis of Drugs, Explosives and Warfare Agents” was an award symposium in honour of Irving Wainer, a Chromatographic Society Martin Gold Medallist. Wainer received the Dal Nogare Award of the Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley for his outstanding contributions to separation science. Very well known as one of the major pioneers in the field of chiral separations, Wainer now uses his separation science to model biological systems. In his current research activities, cell membrane affinity chromatography (CMAC) is used in frontal elution mode primarily as a tool in the field of oncology. Wainer was most humble and thankful in his words of
acceptance. He went to great lengths to thank the Delaware group not just for the award but
Family, friends and students help Irving Wainer (centre, with award shield) celebrate his Dal Nogare Award from the Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley
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