Thar Instruments Announces 2008 SFC Product Line

Thar Instruments, Inc., the global leader in Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) systems, announced its expanded product lineup for 2008 resulting from the acquisition of Berger SFC products from METTLER TOLEDO.

For analytical applications, the Berger SFC Analytix^® and Thar SFC Method Station continue to be available because both instruments enjoy broad customer acceptance. For analytical/semi-preparative applications, the Investigator system remains the instrument of choice because of its greater fraction collection flexibility. The Berger MiniGram becomes obsolete. For preparative applications, Thar continues to offer its newest and smallest footprint preparative system, the SFC Prep 80, featuring a benchtop configuration. Thar will no longer manufacture the Berger MultiGram II.

Thar will offer the industry-standard, open-bed style collection on the SFC-MS Prep 30 for mass-directed purification utilizing the Waters 3100 mass spectrometer and FractionLynx. The SFC-MS Prep 30 is upgradeable to the SFC-MS Prep 100 (100 mL/min), which Thar plans to introduce in early in 2008. The Berger PrepSFC automated UV-triggered system becomes obsolete immediately. Thar will offer the Berger Multigram III for purifying 5-500 grams of material, and retire the Thar SFC Prep 200 in 2008. Thar continues to offer the Thar SFC Prep 350 - the flagship instrument for purifying tens to thousands of grams of material per run. Thar will offer the PetroAnalyzer analytical SFC system to refineries and discontinue Berger SFC’s former collaboration with AC Controls.

The new SFC systems lineup includes software for instrument control and data management. Thar software engineers have been developing SFC software for more than 10 years, and will broaden the software capabilities of the new product line with several releases planned for 2008 including: Chromeleon from Dionex, ChemStation from Agilent, Empower from Waters and a new universal software for all Thar systems – ChromScope.