Introduction The term chromatography actually means colour writing, and signifies a technique by which the substance to be examined is placed in a vertical glass tube containing an adsorbent, the different segments of the substance traveling through the adsorbent at distinctive rates of velocity, according to their degree of attraction to it, and producing bands of colour at different levels of the adsorption column. The substances least absorbed emerge earliest; those more strongly absorbed emerge later. (Wixom et al., 2011) In chromatography of all types, there is a mobile phase and a stationary phase. The stationary phase is the phase that does not move and the mobile phase is the one that does move. The mobile phase moves through the stationary phase picking up the compounds to be tested. As the mobile phase continues to …show more content…
The developing solution was poured into a tank and was tightly covered with a glass lid, and the tank was allowed to be saturated to ensure that the solution was equilibrated in the gas phase. Silica plate for TLC analysis: A horizontal line was drawn with a pencil on the plate and it was about 1 cm above the bottom of the plate. The horizontal line was drawn faintly so as to avoid damaging the silica gel on the plate. On the horizontal line, two marks were made and one was named A and the other B. These marks were made towards the centre of the plate at a distance apart because when spots are made at the edge of a plate, the result would be an improper travel of the samples as the solvent advances on the plate. The solution with the pigments was spotted 15 times on both region A and region B and then allowed to dry. When the plate was dry it was placed into the tank for at least 20