Chromatography Lab

Chromatography serves mainly as a tool for the examination and separation of mixtures of chemical substances. Chromatography is using a flow of solvent or gas to cause the components of a mixture to migrate differently from a narrow starting point in a specific medium, in the case of this experiment, filter paper. It is used for the purification and isolation of various substances. There are two phases in chromatography:
1. Stationary Phase – a solid that does not move. In this experiment was the chromatography paper.
2. Moving Phase – a liquid. In this experiment 0.1% of Hydrochloric Acid was used as the solvent.
In all chromatographic separations, there is an important relationship between the solvent, the chromatography paper, and the mixture. The main requirement of the solvent is to dissolve the mixture needing to be separated. The porous paper used must absorb the components of the mixtures selectively and reversibly. For the
Methods and Materials
In this experiment, three dye molecules were used to calculate the solubility of the chemical structures in the relation to Rf . The Carmine dye was used because it contain six –OH bonds. Since, six –OH bonds were identified in this molecule the Rf results obtained, should differ greatly from the results taken from the other molecules. Alizarin (red) dye was chosen because it has one -OH bond. The third molecule Azure chosen because it does not contain any –OH bonds. 1% Hydrochloric Acid solution was chosen as a solvent for this experiment because of the hydrophobic properties it contains. The hydrophilic solution has the ability to provide more mobility of the dye molecules when tested. NaHCO3 is a hydrophobic molecule because of its associated charge, therefore it was not used in this