silica/alumina chromatography

[ap01]

Does anyone know of any texts on the basics of open column chromatography using silica and/or alumina for sample preparation during analysis of organic contaminants? Specifically, I am looking for details on activation/deactivation using water to modify the stationary phase. This is a very widely applied technique but there is a lot of variation in the details. Some people use completely activated silica/alumina, others deactivate to a certain degree (e.g. 2 to 10%), but in no case have I ever read of any justification for the procedure in question being used or read any discussion of the effects of varing the degree of deactivation.

Thanks.

AP

[skunked_once]

The information you seek is in Residue Reviews, volume 16, 1966, pp. 1-29, "Adsorbents and their application to column cleanup of pesticide residues". This series is currently titled "Reviews of environmental contamination and toxicology".

[Uwe Neue]

There is some info on this in my book on "HPLC Columns". I used the work of Engelhardt and coworkers for this. These authors used solvents half-saturated with water to get a reproducible and reasonably fast equilibration of silica with the mobile phase.

[ap01]

Thanks for the advice.

AP