Chromatography with Autumn Leaves

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Pete                                                                                                Ifrah Thabet

Chromatography with Autumn Leaves

Chromatography is used to separate pure substances from a mixture of substances, such as a cell extract. It is based on various substances having different solubility’s in several solvents. The components that are separated are distributed between two phases: a stationary phase and a mobile phase. This technique separates the substances in terms of the relative size of the molecules. We used this technique to identify the pigments present in autumn leaves.  The function of a plants pigment is to trap light energy and convert it into chemical energy that can be used by the plant to make glucose and sugar.

The leaves change colour in Autumn because the chlorophyll starts to break down to allow the other plant pigments colours to show, these pigments in clued the red, yellow and orange.

There are four main types of chromatography. These are Liquid Chromatography, Gas Chromatography, Thin-Layer Chromatography and Paper Chromatography (which we used).

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TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography) is a very commonly used technique in synthetic chemistry for identifying compounds and determining their purity. It only requires small quantities of the compound and is much faster. Thin-layer chromatography consists of a stationary phase that is powerless on a glass or plastic plate, and an organic solvent. When the solvent front reaches the other edge of the stationary phase, the plate is removed from the solvent reservoir. Then the separated spots are visualized with ultraviolet light.

A common type of Liquid Chromatography is HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography). High Performance Liquid Chromatographs (HPLC) uses ...

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