A High-Capacity Pressurized Continuous Chromatograph

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Abstract
Multicomponent liquid chromatographic separations have been achieved by using a slowly rotating annular bed of sorbent material. The feed material is continuously introduced at a stationary point at the top of the bed, and eluent is allowed to flow everywhere else around the annulus. The rotation of the sorbent bed causes the separated components to appear as helical bands, each of which has a characteristic, stationary exit point; hence the separation process is truly continuous. The concept has been developed primarily on a 279-mm-diam by 0.6-m-long device with a 12.7-mm-wide annulus. The effects of annulus width and diameter have been studied using the same device with annulus widths up to 114.3 mm. With this largest width, approximately 96% of the area available within the outer cylinder is devoted to the rotating sorbent bed. Further annulus-width studies have been pursued on units with 89- and 445-mm diameters. These geometric extensions to the basic concept allow extremely large capacity increases with minimal loss in separation and no increase in chromatograph diameter. The effects associated with increased feed concentration have also been studied. In this effort as well as in the annulus-width program, the separation of copper, nickel, and cobalt components from a carbonate solution was studied in detail. The nickel and cobalt components are found in the leach liquor of the Caron process for recovering nickel and cobalt from laterite ores. Nominally 50-μm-diam Dowex 50W-X8 cation exchange resin was used

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