Question

what would have been the result if the column was run with the acetone as the only eluting solvent? thoroughly explain your answer.

Answer 1

Acetone is both a polar and non-polar substance which makes it ideal as a solvent in chromatography compared to something like water, which is a polar substance and is not able to dissolve non polar substances. But in a chromatographic separation ideally affinities of compounds for the mobile and stationary phases are different and so we can be eluted with different retention times. Therefore acetone as mobile phase lead elution of all compounds retained on the column at same time.