Question

BIOCHEMISTRY

1) If it was necessary to separate adhmulone and humulone, what chromatographic conditions might be varied to obtain baseline separation?

Answer 1

For the better separation between adhmulone and humulone the Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) is used because it is a liquid preparative liquid chromatography technique that separate components of a sample between two immiscible liquid phases.

The importance of applying CPC is clear-

• it is cheap since the only expense incurred is the solvent.

• There is no need to use the extremely expensive preparative HPLC columns that accumulate non-eluted analytes over time, that sooner or later elute, contaminating the compounds of interest.

• On the other hand, if they do not elute they reduce the loading capacity and resolution of the column and have to be replaced.

• Another advantage is that no pre-treatment of the extract is necessary since the impurities elute before or remain in the stationary phase when all compounds of interest have eluted.

• This saves time, and avoids provide the baseline purification of samples.