Carrier-aided centrifugal partition chromatography for preparative-scale separations

Abstract

Centrifugal partition chromatography is a highly attractive technique for economic preparative-scale separations of a variety of compounds. The technique has been improved by adding a carrier compound to the stationary phase. The separation of alkali metal picrates by using dibenzo-18-crown-6 in chloroform-butan-1-ol as the stationary phase and water as the mobile phase. The retention volumes were found to correlate almost linearly with K(extraction) values, and the separation factor for K+/Na+ was 1.99 with 150 microcells. With suitable carriers the technique should be widely applicable to a variety of samples. The advantages and limitations, together with an outline of the physico-chemical background of carrier-aided chromatography, are reported.