• Question: What is your favourite separation technique?

    Asked by anon-359996 on 28 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 28 Mar 2023:

      I really don’t us separation techniques much but one one project that I’m running one of my colleagues will be doing a lot of gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry to identify flavour compounds in whisky as it matures in the barrel.

    • Photo: Alana McNulty

      Alana McNulty answered on 28 Mar 2023:

      I used a technique called sequential extractions during my PhD. I applied a series of different chemicals to samples of my uranium -contaminated soil and measured how much uranium was released with each different chemical/round of extraction. This technique helps you to understand what uranium (or any potential contaminant in the ground) sticks to…for example, it might bind to iron in the subsurface… and that can help us understand how to remove contaminants and what treatments we can apply.

    • Photo: Rebecca Woods

      Rebecca Woods answered on 28 Mar 2023:

      Liquid-liquid extraction, really useful and reliable and the one I use most besides column chromatography (where co-ellution is a pain).

    • Photo: Graeme Dykes

      Graeme Dykes answered on 28 Mar 2023:

      Short answer: the one which works!

      If you can get something to crystallise, then you get a great buzz. I have used vacuum distillation to turn a horrible brown, mess into a pure, colourless liquid (Google, “Kugelrohr”)
      Flash column chromatography was a central method in my research.
      Currently, I use size exclusion chromatography (big molecules drop through more quickly than small)

    • Photo: Jade Markham

      Jade Markham answered on 31 Mar 2023:

      I honestly just do organic separations. Where you have to solvents – one organic and one usually water and they don’t mix and sit on top of each other and you use a separating funnel

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