Countercurrent chromatography in analytical chemistry (IUPAC technical report).
Résumé
A review. Countercurrent chromatog. (CCC) is a generic term covering all forms of liq.-liq. chromatog. that use a support-free liq. stationary phase held in place by a simple centrifugal or complex centrifugal force field. Biphasic liq. systems are used with one liq. phase being the stationary phase and the other being the mobile phase. Although initiated almost 30 years ago, CCC lacked reliable columns. This is changing now, and the newly designed centrifuges appearing on the market make excellent CCC columns. This review focuses on the advantages of a liq. stationary phase and addresses the chromatog. theory of CCC. The main difference with classical liq. chromatog. (LC) is the variable vol. of the stationary phase. There are mainly two different ways to obtain a liq. stationary phase using centrifugal forces, the hydrostatic way and the hydrodynamic way. These two kinds of CCC columns are described and compared. The reported applications of CCC in anal. chem. and comparison with other sepn. and enrichment methods show that the technique can be successfully used in the anal. of plants and other natural products, for the sepn. of biochems. and pharmaceuticals, for the sepn. of alkaloids from medical herbs, in food anal., etc. From the studies of the last two decades, recommendations are also given for the application of CCC in trace inorg. anal. and in radioanal. chem. [on SciFinder(R)]