Novel Designs for Centrifugal Countercurrent chromatography: V. Comparative Studies on Performance of Various Column Configurations.

The conventional toroidal coil in centrifugal countercurrent chromatography has a low level of stationary phase retention, since a half of each helical turn is entirely occupied by the mobile phase. In order to cope with this problem, several new column designs including zigzag, saw-tooth and figure-8 patterns have been introduced and their performance was compared in terms of retention of the stationary phase (Sf), peak resolution (Rs), theoretical plate number (N) and column pressures. Overall results of experiments indicate that the figure-8 column yields the highest Rs when the lower phase is used as the mobile phase. Since the column pressure of all these new columns are much lower than that in the traditional toroidal coil column, the separation efficiency can be improved using a long separation column without a risk of column damage by high back pressure.