By: Terrence O'Hanlon 

If you are like me, you strive to reduce the amount of paper in your life.  Now there is a new form of paper you will want to add to your life if you are involved with machinery condition monitoring and more specifically, oil analysis!

Herguth Laboratories is offering CircOil, a Thin Layer, Radial, Planar Chromatography analysis tool to monitor used oil.

William R. Herguth, CEO of Herguth Laboratories offers the following explanation of the Science of Thin Layer, Radial, Planar Chromatography:

That’s a mouthful of words!  Especially for a simple, quick and very effective lube oil analysis tool.

There are many forms of chromatography, but let’s look at the name in more detail, as it apply to this technique.  

Chromatography is a technique for separating a sample into its constituent components and then measuring or identifying the components in some way. The components to be separated are distributed between two mutually immiscible phases. The heart of any chromatograph is the stationary phase, which is sometimes a solid as in thin layer chromatography.  The stationary phase is attached to a support, a solid inert material. The sample is moved across or through the stationary phase.  The differences in the chemical and physical properties of the components in the sample are used to bring about the separation and govern the rate of movement (called migration) of the individual components.  When a sample component emerges from the chromatograph, it is said to have been eluted.  Ideally, components emerge from the system in the order of their increasing interaction with the stationary phase.  Separation is obtained when one component is retarded sufficiently to prevent overlap with the peak of an adjacent neighbor.

The term radial refers to the circle formation of sample constitutes after the sample has eluted on chromatography substrate, when left on a horizontal plain. Thus the term; radial planar chromatography.

In thin-layer chromatography. a stationary phase is coated on an inert plate of glass, plastic, or metal. The samples are spotted or placed as streaks on the plate.  Development of the chromatogram takes place as the mobile phase percolates through the stationary phase and the spot locations.  The sample travels across the plate in the mobile phase, propelled by capillary action.  Separation of components occurs through adsorption, partition, exclusion, or ion-exchange processes, or a combination of these. 

In planar chromatography, the position of the resultant bands or zones, after development, is observed or detected by appropriate methods.  Because of its convenience and simplicity, sharpness of separations, high sensitivity, speed of separation, and ease of recovery of the sample components, planar chromatography finds many applications.

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