Chromatography
Chromatography is the collective term for a set of laboratory techniques for the separation of mixtures. It involves passing a mixture dissolved in a "Mobile Phase" through a stationary phase, which separates the analyte to be measured from other molecules in the mixture and allows it to be isolated.
Chromatography may be preparative or analytical. The purpose of preparative chromatography is to separate the components of a mixture for further use (and is thus a form of purification). Analytical chromatography is done normally with smaller amounts of material and is for measuring the relative proportions of analytes in a mixture. The two are not mutually exclusive.
In any chemical or bioprocessing industry, the need to separate and purify a product from a complex mixture is a necessary and important step in the production line. Today, there is existence of wide market of methods in which industries can accomplish these goals. Chromatography is a ver special separation process for a multitude of reasons. First of all, it can separate complex mixtures with great precision. Even very similar components, such as proteins that may only vary by a single amino acid, can be separated with chromatography. In fact, chromatography can purify basically any soluble or volatile substance if the right absorbent material, carrier fluid, and operating conditions are employed. Second, chromatography can be used to separate delicate products since the conditions under which it is performed are not typically severe. For these reasons, chromatography is quite well suited to a variety of uses in the field of biotechnology, such as separating mixtures of proteins.