Countercurrent chromatography: liquid-liquid partition chromatography without solid support.

The liquid-liquid partition chromatographic system reported here involves a long helix of narrow-bore tubing. When the coiled tube is filled with one phase of a two-phase system and fed with the other phase, phase-interchange takes place in each turn of the coil, leaving a segment of the former phase as the stationary phase. Consequently, solutes present in either phase are subjected to a multistep partition process. The column efficiency, estimated on a separation of dinitrophenyl amino acids, is comparable to that of gas chromatography.