Chromatography Essay

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Chromatography and electrophoresis are used for many wonderful processes that take place in labs. Chromatography and electrophoresis are separation techniques employed by chemists. Chemists execute multiple chemical tasks daily therefore they must find the most efficient ways to carry out these functions. Even though electrophoresis has some benefits, Chromatography is more useful than electrophoresis because it is more versatile and can be widely used in research; chromatography should be used more than electrophoresis in scientific research because it is more effective in a lab setting and can be used in more fields. The book Methods of Separating Mixtures defines chromatography as “a very widely used method of separating mixtures, particularly …show more content…

For instance, it is used to determine the vitamin content and nutritional quality of foods, for spoilage detection, process control of foods, and to detect food additives (e.g. Bio-Rad). According to the article by Flinn Scientific Inc. “Paper chromatography is [often] called adsorption chromatography. The paper acts as an adsorbent, a solid which is capable of attracting and binding the components in a mixture. The mixture to be separated is “spotted” onto the surface of the paper and a solvent is allowed to seep or flow through the paper by capillary action. If one of the components in the mixture is more strongly adsorbed onto the paper than another, it will move up the paper more slowly than the solvent. Components that are not strongly adsorbed onto the paper will move up the paper at a faster rate. This ‘partitioning’ of the components of a mixture between the paper and the solvent separates the components and gives rise to different bands or spots. If the components of the mixture are colored, like food dyes or pigments in an ink, the colored bands are easily distinguished.” Paper chromatography is an easy and useful process. This process is beneficial because it allows consumers to know exactly what chemicals are in their …show more content…

According to the Analytical Chemistry Department of the University of Basque Country, “High performance liquid chromatography has been successfully applied to cannabis plant extracts to identify cannabinoid compounds after their quantitative isolation by means of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). Cannabinoid compounds and its quantity is important to know for several reasons. The most important reason being that doctors who recommend medical marijuana to their patients need this information to create a cannabis profile. “Every sample that is submitted to laboratories for testing is registered into the lab’s database. Each test result reports a different ‘cannabinoid profile’ that lays out all percentages of active cannabinoids, as well as any bacteria or fungus that was found in the sample…Another cannabinoid reported on the profile is Cannabinol (CBN). The compound is a breakdown product of THC, and is not produced in the course of the plants natural life cycle. Therefore, a large presence of this cannabinoid in a profile indicates that the buds were cured for a little too long”

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