Chromatography Forum

On finding the perfect system that will separate everything:

There was a famous chemist (I'm afraid I can't remember who), whose student came rushing up to him and declared, "I've discovered the perfect solvent. It dissolves absolutely everything".

The old chemist's reply: "Then what do you intend to keep it in?"

A story from my Ph.D. work - one of my advisors found a great method for separation pre-derivatized sugars via gradient HPLC. The only problem was the column manufacturer was Japanese and did not even sell columns in the US. After checking all the column manufacturers in the US I could for a similar column, I ended up working 6 months to get the system to work. I ended up using 2 columns back to back to get the resolution needed for this work.

Moral of the story - take everything with a grain of salt!

Dave