Summary
Although Michael Tswett is the originator of chromatography, little is known about the performance of his chromatographic systems. His descriptions of the separation of plant pigments are detailed but nevertheless difficult to interprete by today's chromatographic theory. By our own experiments with the system calcium carbonate/benzene it was found that the separation factor of chlorophyll a and b is approx. 1.6 which means that less than 100 theoretical plates are necessary for separation. Tswett's columns with 50 μm particles and 2–3 cm of bed height presumably exceeded this plate number. His separations could have been impaired by mass overload and by a volume flow rate which was two orders of magnitude faster than the optimum.
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Dedicated to Professor Leslie S. Ettre on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
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Meyer, V.R. Michael Tswett's columns: Facts and speculations. Chromatographia 34, 342–346 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02268366
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02268366