KFU engineers present sorbent production device
The sorben is needed for liquid chromatography.
High-performance liquid chromatography is used in analytical chemistry to control, in particular, drug quality, including authenticity, unwelcome additions, and homogeneity. This stage is mandatory for drug control before marketization.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Engineering Emil Shamsutdinov explains, “The main element of HPLC is a chromatographic column, which is a tube filled with a stationary phase (sorbent): a fine powder or a porous monolithic structure. The stationary phase may itself be an active phase that is designed to separate the elements of the mobile phase, but most often it is a support on which is applied a chemically bound or physically formed active phase used for separation. At the moment, there are no domestic manufacturers of chromatographic columns in Russia, including due to the lack of domestic developments of the sorbent.”
The technology is as follows – quartz sand is crushed in an attritor to a size of 100 microns, passed through a high-frequency induction discharge, mixed with a colloidal solution of pyrogenic silicon oxide in a ratio of 3/1, the resulting mixture is sprayed in an oven at 1,050 degrees and dried for four hours, then the mixture is re-mixed with colloidal pyrogenic silica solution, re-sprayed in an oven and dried. The process of re-mixing and drying is repeated until the particle size is not more than five microns.
The installation for implementing this method consists of an attritor with an opening outlet at the bottom, a conveyor belt, a high-frequency induction discharge generator, a pump, and a sprayer. The invention has been tested by pharmaceutical producers and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The industrial partner PharmMedPolis RT (Pharmaceutical and Medical Polis of Tatarstan). A patent for the technology has been obtained.
The project is co-handled by Director of the Institute of Engineering Nail Kashapov, Lead Research Associate Ramil Kashapov, Senior Research Associate Lenar Kashapov, and master student Ilya Gordienko. The research is made by the Laboratory of Plasmochemical Production of Functional Materials.