Applied Separations

Applied Separations was started in 1987 with the mission to provide sample preparation products to today's analytical laboratory and has become a pioneer and world-wide leader in the use of DNA-free products and Supercritical Fluids in traditional and non-traditional marketplaces. We are leading the charge in making Supercritical Fluids a growing part of the conversation on green chemistry. What used to be a technology intended for extractions of things like caffeine from coffee can now be applied in dozens of areas, including aerogels, metal injection molding, medical implant cleaning and artifact restoration. Applied Separations was one of the early participants in Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin Technology Partnership, located on the Lehigh University campus, an incubator program for high technology start-up companies. The company secured research grants to develop manufacturing methods to produce consistently high quality Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) chromatography sorbents. The line of consumable SPE cartridges was marketed under the trade name Spe-ed - solid phase extraction and elution device. In 1992, Applied Separations entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a low-cost supercritical fluid extraction instrument that overcomes many of the shortcomings of the instruments currently in the marketplace. The culmination of this effort, two years later, was the Spe-ed SFE. Two of the foremost experts in supercritical fluid extraction, Dr. Jerry King and the late Dr. Robert Maxwell, have lent their names to the Spe-ed SFE project. Market acceptance of the Spe-ed SFE was overwhelming.