ABSTRACT
Column chromatography has been associated with the purification and isolation of chemical species since its inception. The original work by Tswett [1] was for the isolation of plant pigments and it was only with the introduction of the instrumental methods of chromatography (first with gas chromatography [2] and later with HPLC [3]) that it became a mainstream analytical technique. Even then, these techniques were rapidly transformed into preparative processes, although the use of preparative gas chromatography has not expanded into the mainstream of preparative separation techniques in part due to the practical limitation that the compounds should have boiling points below 250°C and should be temperature stable.
