New legislation such as the Clean Air and Water Act and a general trend towards green chemistry stipulate the use of environmental friendly chemical products and processes. Metrohm responds to this introducing a new generation of high capacity anion exchange columns. The new columns feature an inner diameter of only 2 mm enabling lower eluent flow rates and less solvent consumption.

Moreover, environmentally benign carbonate/bicarbonate solutions are used with the columns for most anion separations. Not only the columns got thinner but also the suppressor module was scaled down, leading to reduced consumption of regenerant solution: for complete regeneration, as little as 2 mL acid (1 mol/L) is sufficient and no exchange of cartridges or membranes is necessary.

Besides the ecological benefits, microbore columns require less frequent eluent preparation and thus improve accuracy and save time. Additionally, they get along with only small amounts of sample material and can be perfectly interfaced with various inline detectors.