Abstract
THE removal of coloured impurities from solutions by shaking with charcoal is the most familiar application of adsorption, and chemists have shown enterprise in improving the adsorbent by ‘activation’ and in finding new ways of using the material. In applying adsorption to analytical problems, however, it was left to a botanist, Prof. M. Tswett, to display initiative and imagination and present chemists with a device of great value. He allowed coloured solutions to percolate through a compressed column of adsorbent, and by using finely divided calcium carbonate instead of charcoal, he was able to follow visually the track of the pigments. Different coloured substances travelled down the column at different speeds and the resulting separation into coloured zones could be enhanced by ‘developing the chromatogram’, that is, by allowing sufficient of the pure solvent to pass down the column after the solution had all come into contact with the adsorbent.
Principles and Practice of Chromatography
Prof. L. Zechmeister Dr. L. Cholnoky. Translated from the second and enlarged German edition by A. L. Bacharach and F. A. Robinson. Pp. xviii + 362. (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1941). 25s. net.
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MORTON, R. Principles and Practice of Chromatography. Nature 148, 8 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148008a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148008a0