Elutriation separates materials using a liquid or gas column. It can be used for recycling, mineral analysis, and preparing cell samples. Equipment is available from manufacturers, but can be expensive. Small and light particles go up the column, while large and heavy particles go down. Elutriation equipment is used in labs to avoid contamination. Buffer media and elution gas mixtures are available from scientific suppliers.
Elutriation is a material separation method in which smaller and larger materials are separated with the use of a liquid or gas column. It can be used at the macro and micro level, from preparing cell samples for analysis to single stream recycling separation. Equipment for use in elution is available from a number of manufacturers and people can order custom equipment for unique applications. Such equipment tends to be more expensive than offerings on the conventional product line.
In the elution, the materials are fed into a rising column of separation medium. It can be something like a buffer solution or a blast of air. Small and light particles go up the column, while large and heavy particles go down. This creates a series of different sized layers of different materials. In something like single-stream recycling, large jets of air are used for basic, fast separation, allowing plastic containers to go one side of a processing plant, while glass lands on the other, for example , with the metals being separated earlier in the process with the use of magnets.
In the laboratory, elutriation equipment is designed to work with very small particles in samples of blood, urine and other materials. Lab technicians are concerned with contamination as well as sorting and must follow strict procedures when using the equipment to ensure that samples do not come into contact with each other and cause erroneous readings. Medical elution equipment is usually designed to be easily sterilized between uses.
Another use of elutriation can be seen in the analysis of mineral samples, as seen when oceanographers want to research the composition of benthic clay or geologists want to evaluate the content of mineral deposits. Samples are separated by size and density in the column, allowing people to generate a complete list of materials in the sample and note their concentrations. People who value mineral deposits for commercial value are especially interested in mergers; a site may contain diamonds, for example, but in such low quantities that they cannot be efficiently mined for sale.
Buffer media and elution gas mixtures are available from scientific suppliers in cases where plain air or water is not sufficient for a given task. Individual labs can also formulate their own, providing information on how to build the solution in the lab manual so technicians can be consistent in following directions.
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