Recent Progress in Countercurrent Chromatography

Abstract

Countercurrent chromatography is a powerful separation technique, which is used as an alternative or complementary technique to other chromatographic methods due to its high efficiency and preparative capacity. This technique does not require a solid stationary phase and relies simply on the partition of a sample between the two phases of an immiscible solvent system. Thus, it eliminates the complications resulting from the solid support matrix, such as irreversible adsorptive sample loss and deactivation, tailing of solute peaks, and contamination. With these advantages, CCC is gaining popularity as an important separation method. This review summarizes the basic principles and gives the most recent CCC applications in various areas, including the isolation and purification of natural products, development of different elution modes and multidimensional methods, progress in pH‐zone‐refining CCC techniques, bioseparation with aqueous polymer two‐phase systems, enantioseparation with various efficient chiral selectors, and on‐line monitoring of the eluate.

Keywords:

• Countercurrent chromatography
• Elution mode
• Multidimensional
• pH‐Zone‐refining
• Bioseparation
• Enantioseparation
• On‐line monitoring

Acknowledgment

Financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of China (20472073) is gratefully acknowledged.