Simplified Column Chromatography

[neurobloom]

1 to 12 ratio 25% ammonia/Isopropanol works pretty well for tryptamines on silica.
Isopropanol higher viscosity slows down the capillary front but that enhances alkaloids seperation. Toluene/methanol or heptane/acetone will not work cor this purpose it's too non Polar the RF's will travel all the way to the top too fast and won't seperate. You want something more polar matching tryptamines polarity as a tertiary amine like methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, butanol with ammonia. You could adjust polarity with a small fraction of ethyl acetate to improve resolution if RF's streaks or add little more alcohol to decrease or increase polarity in slight increments.

If using silica gel 60 micron is what you want. Cellulose should work also as the stationary phase but i bet it would require a different eluent system.

The thicker the stationary phase the higher the sample loading capacity but also the poorer the resolution will be in seperation of compounds. It's a trade off.

There are some commercial paper chromatography with decently high load capacity around to try for preparative chromatography.

 

[Transform]

Cellulose should work also as the stationary phase but i bet it would require a different eluent system.

High purity cellulose powder is available as a pet food diluent so this one's highly accessible for otc experimentation. I still hope to try this out, eventually.

 

[Transform]

Do you cap off the jar you put the glass and paper in, as you would with a TLC silica plate?

Yes, you want to maintain a saturated vapour environment, and also not simply have half your solvent evaporate off.

what does 15-20% acetone/heptane mean? What are the ratios?

This means there's effectively a 15 - 20% solution of acetone in heptane but you may want to check whether that's just volumes, or if it's a mole fraction ratio.

The former would be mL per 100 mL direct from the percentage, whereas the latter takes the molecular masses of the respective solvents into account, which would work out as being a lot less acetone (mw 58 → 8.7 - 11.6 g) than heptane (mw 100 → makes up the remainder, 85 - 80 g). Correcting for density, this equates to about 11 - 15 mL acetone, versus ca. 125 - 118 mL heptane when using mole fractions, which is more like 8 - 11% by volume, or roughly just over half as much acetone, proportionally, in comparison to using those original percentages as volumes.