Solvent System Selection Strategies in Countercurrent Separation.

The majority of applications in countercurrent and centrifugal partition chromatography, collectively known as countercurrent separation, are dedicated to medicinal plant and natural product research. In countercurrent separation, the selection of the appropriate solvent system is of utmost importance as it is the equivalent to the simultaneous choice of column and eluent in liquid chromatography. However, solvent system selection is often laborious, involving extensive partition and/or analytical trials. Therefore, simplified solvent system selection strategies that predict the partition coefficients and, thus, analyte behavior are in high demand and may advance both the science of countercurrent separation and its applications. The last decade of solvent system selection theory and applications are critically reviewed, and strategies are classified according to their data input requirements. This offers the practitioner an up-to-date overview of rationales and methods for choosing an efficient solvent system, provides a perspective regarding their accuracy, reliability, and practicality, and discusses the possibility of combining multiple methods for enhanced prediction power.