Fluidics and optics player IDEX Health & Science has unveiled its new Flat Film Membrane Degasser.

In a transition from traditional lumen designs, IDEX presents a technology that aims to provide powerful performance control with increased solvent compatibility. The film degasser aims to provide improved performance and efficiency in a smaller footprint device and the control methodology shifts the emphasis from ‘constant vacuum’ to ‘constant performance’, by allowing users to select an optimal degassing efficiency for any HPLC methods.

With membrane and flow channel design, IDEX claims the Flat Film Degasser delivers the lowest fluidic resistance in the industry. The membrane provides sufficient surface area to degas solvents to the highest degree necessary for analytical scale (up to 10 mL/min flow rate) HPLC systems. Combined with a flow channel design and significantly shorter fluid and membrane diffusion paths, the rate of degassing is enhanced over tubular/lumen designs and enables an overall smaller instrument footprint. The system uses a non-metallic flow path, which enables universal application of a single type of degasser to multiple types of HPLC methods.

The new patent pending vacuum control algorithm provides the user experience to integrate degasser into the separation method control protocol and select a given efficiency for any HPLC system. One can dial up or down the pressure to get the exact specification needed for every application. This method of adjustment achieves an appropriate level of degassing for any HPLC system design and separation method and enables consistent operation to reduce pervaporation and associated mobile phase concentration changes. The flow restriction is constant, regardless of the applied vacuum.

Saba Jazeeli, Sr. product manager, analytical instrument market, said: “In HPLC separations, the reduction of dissolved air from the mobile phase is of critical importance to the baseline and pump flow rate stability, to mobile phase composition and, accordingly, to the proper identification of compounds separated by the HPLC method. As a market leader in degassing technology, our latest product is aimed at revolutionising degassing in the industry. With it, we have created a versatile, high performance system that is suitable for universal application. It eliminates the design limitations of tubing-based degassers, delivering reduced pervaporation and a lower environmental impact by controlling the discharge of solvent vapours to the laboratory atmosphere.”