Spectrum Chromatography's
S-3 HPLC Solvent Recycler

The operating/service manual for Spectrum Chromatography's S-3 Solvent Saver System is available on-line in Adobe PDF format. You can use this to evaluate the S-3 before purchase or as a supplemental copy should you misplace the one included with your recycler. Click here to obtain a copy of the manual. (About 154 kb long.) You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view the on-line edition. If you do not already have a copy, you may obtain a free one here.

• Now On Sale for Only US$1,460.00 When Purchased over the Internet
• Reduces HPLC Mobile Phase Consumption by up to 90%
• Validation Output for GMP, GLP, and ISO-9000 Compliance
• Works with all detector types: UV, Fluorescence, RI, and others
• CE Marked
• All Wetted Parts are TFE Teflon

On Sale Now! The S-3 Solvent Saver System is now on sale over this web site only for $1390.00! This is about the same price as five 4L bottles of HPLC grade acetonitrile (VWR catalog number EM-AX0145P-1). If you use 25 liters or more of solvent for isocratic analytical HPLC analyses, your solvent savings alone will more than pay for the S-3 Solvent Recycler.

Your savings do not end with your reduced solvent costs. Solvent disposal costs can also be a significant expense for an analytical hplc laboratory. The reduction in solvent use also reduces your solvent disposal costs by a similar amut.

How It Works
Most of the time, and especially between runs, you will be pumping pure solvent into your columns and pure solvent will be leaving your column. This is generally pump from a reservoir of solvent and allowed to drain into a container of solvent waste. This pumping of expensive, pure, solvent into a waste container can be expensive and is certainly wasteful. The S-3 Solvent Recycler uses an inert (all TFE Teflon) valve to recycle the outlet of your column back to the original solvent reservoir.

Your existing detector (UV, fluorescence, refractive index, or other technology) can also be regarded as an impurity detector. When components of your sample elute off of the column, they represent "impurities" in the pure solvent background. When your existing detector sees these impurities, it changes its output, making a peak in the chromatogram. The S-3 HPLC Solvent Recycler recieves this same output from your detector. It uses this signal to determine when pure solvent is leaving the column.

While pure solvent is leaving the column, the flow from the column is directed back to the solvent reservoir. When your detector detects an impurity (when it makes a peak in the chromatogram), the S-3 Solvent Recycler diverts the flow from the column to your existing waste container. This keeps the solvent reservoir full of pure solvent and free of any components of the sample which you are analyzing.

Since most isocratic analytical HPLC systems spend most of their time recording a baseline, most (typically >80%) of the solvent can be recycled.

Note: Like all HPLC Solvent Recyclers, the S-3 Solvent Saver System is not suitable for use with gradient systems, it is only suitable for use when performing isocratic separations.

If you are doing preparative chromatography, a CF-1 Fraction Collector when used with an optional diverter valve provides all of the functionality of a solvent recycler and also collects your fractions.