ABSTRACT
Alain Berthod and Beatrice Billardello Laboratoire des Sciences Analytiques, UMR CNRS 5619, Universite de Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France
I. INTRODUCTION
Since its inception by Ito [1] in the late sixties, our knowledge of countercurrent chromatography (CCC) is slowly growing. Reliable instruments are appearing on the market [2], allowing the technique to spread and to gain acceptance. CCC is still not well known or it is associated with negative opinions by many chromatographers. The
need for powerful tools for purification and extraction in difficult media and the growing concern for environmental problems caused by industry have pushed more people working in separation science to be interested in CCC.
