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- Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2005 6:17 pm
I am trying to publish a paper that reports a new application of LC instruments to study adsorption at liquid/solid interfaces. I can't say much about it - because I am trying to publish a paper that describes the new technique (I think its new, anyway) and highlights its applications in geochemistry.
However, I have been getting pushback from reviewers saying that what I am doing is the same as what Mikael Tsvet did. I have yet to find a good source of information that describes Tsvet's work in the level of detail that I seek. What I understand is that his work on plant pigments was based on weak interactions b/w the plant pigments and the stationary phase. Although this is described as 'adsorption' chromatography - my understanding is that his worked involved weak reversible adsorption. By the end of his experiments everything he injected came back off the column, i.e. with ultimately total recovery. Resolved into bands of course, which was an amazing finding and a great development!
If someone uses a column experiment to study adsorption - irreversible adsorption, if they inject a mixture - some will bind strongly and irreversibly, and some will pass through the column and be detected. The recovery for an injection in which binding occurs will be less than 1. And so in my mind there is a real difference.
Am I misunderstanding Tsvet's work? To me it was taught in terms of equilibrium.