What Is Chromatography? A Quick Guide
Did you know that the invention of partition chromatography led to the Nobel Prize in 1952?
Chromatography is one of the most revolutionary inventions in the world of chemistry! If you have even a passing interest in science, you absolutely have to know about chromatography.
What is chromatography? Well, the word refers to the process of separating different parts of a mixture so you can identify them. In this article, we’ll be giving you a comprehensive overview of chromatography, how it works, and all its potential applications.
Read on to learn all about it!
Table of Contents
If you’re familiar with Greek roots, you’ll be able to pick apart this word. The “chroma” prefix refers to color, and “graph” refers to writing. Put together, it means “color writing.” This name is very fitting for chromatography, as it writes the composition of a mixture in color!
The first step of chromatography is dissolving the target mixture into a substance. This is the mobile phase in chromatography. Then the second phase is the stationary phase, where the new mixture passes through a second substance.
Each substance in the mixture passes through the stationary phase at different rates, which is what separates them. Each substance has a different retention time, which is how each component is identified.
Each component is also revealed in a different color. The largest molecules appear more slowly, while the smallest ones travel more quickly. This results in several different colored bands.
For a crude example, if you mixed water, alcohol, and a pigment together into a container and dipped a paper into the mixture, the components would travel up the paper at different speeds. You would see bands of different intensities at different points in the paper.
The principle of chromatography has many different applications. Chromatography can be used in food and beverage testing and even forensic sciences. In addition, vaccine creation is one important application of chromatography in medicine.
One of the most common types of chromatography is gas chromatography. In gas chromatography, the mixture is vaporized for the stationary phase along with an inert gas. Then, they are fed through a column to a detector, which they reach at different rates.
The second type of chromatography is liquid chromatography. The mixture is dissolved in an inert liquid and then passed through a silica stationary phase. There are several types of liquid chromatography. In every type of liquid chromatography, the stationary phase happens in these vials from chromtech.com.
The third type of chromatography is ion exchange. This process separates ions based on their charge rather than their size. This allows you to categorize components that have very similar molecular sizes.
As you can see, chromatography is a very important process in chemistry. It allows scientists to break down and identify unknown mixtures and compounds and create new ones!
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