Vortex Counter-Current Chromatography: Performance of a New Preparative Column.

A New preparative column for the vortex counter-current chromatograph was fabricated by making many (966) cylindrical separation units to a high-dendity polyethylene disk and thenthreading them with 6-40 taps. The resulting column had a total capacity of 364 mL. The performance of this vortex column was examined with three different two-phase solvent systems each using a set of suitable test samples: hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-0.1 M hydrochloric acid (1:1:1:1, v/v) for separation of DNP-amino acids; 1-butanol-acetic acid-water (4:1:5, v/v) for separation of dipeptides; and hexane-acetonitrile-water (20:15:2, v/v) for separation of Sudan dyes. Most of the separations show high partition efficiency of over a thousand theoretical plates, as expected based on the results previously obtained in preliminary separations with a small column. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that further improvement of the partition efficiency can be obtained by the modifying column configuration.