Question

1.How a solvent is selected as eluent in chromatography?

Answer 1

If your compound is more polar like amino acids, carboxylic acids, amines, alcohols then a more polar solvent like methanol, ethylacetate sometimes very rare cases even water is also used as an eluent in chromatography.

If your compound is not that much polar use of hexane is recommended. But we use mixture of polar and non-polar sovents used how they will work!.

I am going to explain it by taking an example of two pigmnets seperation. Please save the below image and zoom it for better clarity and resolution.