ABSTRACT
Chromatography is probably the oldest and most important analytical method in crude oil chemistry as well as general analytical chemistry. The first record of the use of the principle of chromatography can be traced back to ancient times when the ancient philosopher, Aristotle, wrote about the use of the adsorptive action of special substances for the purification of seawater. However, the first scientific use of chromatography was at the end of the nineteenth century when in 1895 the German scientist Ferdinand F.Runge described for the first time a chemical separation method based on the chromatography principle. The method used by Runge can be classified or called paper chromatography or a very simple form of thin film chromatography. At the time, the German scientist did not realize the importance of the method, but merely described it as a type of scientific game. At the end of the nineteenth century, R.T.Day, for the first time, attempted to separate crude oil by filtering it through a lime filter. Unfortunately, the scientist did not recognize the main principle on which this method was based but described it as a new filtration technique. The first inventor of chromatography to describe its main principles was the Russian scientist M.S.Zwet, who used the chromatography method in 1903. Zwet was a botanist and used chromatography for the study of chlorophyll. A.J.P.Martin and R.L.Synge received the 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of a new chromatographic analytical method. These scientists were the first to separate amino acids by the chromatographic method. Perhaps this year could be rnarked as the birth year of modern chromatography.
