What’s written in the stars for rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying?

Happy New Year, my dear blog readers! Now that we are off to a fresh start, new resolutions at hand, reflections of 2021 in the past, we are ready to look ahead into the future. And what do we expect to happen for rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying in 2022? Read on to see what I see in the horoscopes of these three techniques.

I was having coffee with a good friend of mine and we got into a discussion about horoscopes. She is a big believer in the power of the stars to predict anything from personality types to possible milestones in a person’s life. As a scientist, I am somewhat perplexed by astrology. I admit that I do read my horoscope occasionally. I am curious if I will come into good fortunes or if I need to be wary of mysterious strangers or if I am more likely to clash with certain astrological signs, mainly the one of my wife!

So I thought I’d give it a try to write a little 2022 science horoscope for the topics we cover on the blog: rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying. Will there be a grain of truth to them, or will the horoscopes just be good fun? Only one way to find out, we must remember to check back at the end of 2022! I count on you to remind me.

Let me begin with rotary evaporation!

Rotary evaporation – Lab evaporation is so well established across chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology labs, that it can easily be considered a bare basic, a backbone of science R&D. Although nearly all scientific labs proudly own a rotary evaporation instrument , I predict the rotary evaporator will find a second home outside of the lab: in the bar and in the kitchen. The applications of rotary evaporation in mixology and flavour creation are in the exponential growth phase, as more and more mixologists and chefs discover the potential of creating unique drinks, sauces and experiences for their customers. In fact, my former colleagues at BUCHI are super excited about this segment with a specifically dedicated Instagram channel on distillation , mixology webinars and I have even written blog posts on the mixology topic . So let’s toast to my prediction coming true!

What should we tackle next from rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying? Let us just go in chronological order and move on to chromatography:

Chromatography – As with rotary evaporation, flash chromatography and prep HPLC methods are well established in countless of R&D labs. With the COVID-19 pandemic, certainly pharmaceutical applications of chromatography have been on the rise, but I want to go down two unexpected roads. One, I believe the technique is becoming ever more popular in the natural products/nutraceutical segment for creation of anything from herbal medicines to cosmetics. BUCHI even held a very interesting webinar on natural products that you can still watch today. Two, as the pandemic, hopefully eases, the cannabis industry will pick up and with it, the need to separate cannabinoids . Flash chromatography and prep HPLC are widely used to achieve purification of cannabinoids and so will chromatography instrument use in this segment. Lastly, those who can and want to create custom chromatography instruments with ultimate capabilities will continue to want to do so, regardless of what the market continues to offer in ready-made solutions.

And last on the list of rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying is spray drying!

Spray drying – This method is widely used by formulation scientists in the pharmaceutical, chemical, biotech and food industries. Here, I predict automated improvements for the spray drying technique . I mean, our dishwashers, blinds, washing machines and all kinds of appliances can be plugged into aps, why not our rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying instruments? I suspect cloud capabilities and improvements in system design will make both use of the spray dryer and data management more convenient. We just have to see if the spray drying and encapsulation industry can keep up with my predictions in 2022 or if we will have to wait a few more years for them to come true.

So, let’s see if I need to add horoscope writer, next to retired blogger as my occupation! Do you agree with my predictions for rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying? Do you have a few guesses of your own? Drop them in the comments section below! And I look forward to exploring many more rotary evaporation, chromatography and spray drying topics with you in 2022!

Till next time,

The Signature of Bart Denoulet at Bart's Blog