6. Outlook

Centrifugal partition chromatography has a technological maturity level (TRL) of 7 on a scale of 1 to 9, i.e. pilot-scale demonstration. The technologies developed are available at production scale (5 to 25 L columns, with flow rates of the order of 1 L · min ^–1 ) and the methodology for scaling up has been validated. The key engineering points have been covered in this article and are well understood. Processes currently under development are being scaled up to industrial scale (large-capacity preparative columns or production columns), for applications involving the purification of molecules, in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, and in particular for biotechnologies (use of micro-organisms, yeast, bacteria, animal cells or microalgae, for the production of molecules of interest) for the valorization of metabolites.