It is very convenient to work with ion exchangers as with paper chromatography because only a minimum amount of manual effort is required. The mixture of salts to be separated, dissolved in a suitable solution, is absorbed in the top of an ion-exchange column. The separation then is achieved by passing an appropriate reagent or solvent down the column (eluting) to move differentially the various constituents. After suitable amounts of reagents (eluant) have passed through the column, different fractions of the effluent (eluate) are available, which can be analyzed separately. The separation may be carried out automatically in case the procedure takes a very long time.
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