Genomed

Ion exchange (IEX), as a process, is a natural phenomenon, which occurs in soil, minerals, and tissue of both plants and animals. In each instance there are active sites, or groups of sites, which take part in ion exchange reactions. In 1858, it was demonstrated that the ion exchange process is in reality a reversible process. The first practical industrial application of the ion exchange process occured in 1905 when sodium-aluminosilicate cation exchanger material was synthesized and used to soften water. In 1935 the first condensate polymers as structural substances for various functional groups were synthesized and patented. Thereby, both anion and cation exchange materials were created. In 1940, preparing these polymers in bead-form was successful. In addition, strong base anion exchange materials on these bead-form polymeric structures could be synthesized. Commercial cation and anion exchange products prepared on the co-polymers have been successfully applied to water treatment or other industrial processes since the 1940s. These products have become known as "gel" type ion exchange materials.

The process of chromatography was first developed in 1906. The initial technique based on absorption and not ion exchange. Conventional and ion exchange chromatography are similar in many respects. The mechanisms are, however, very different. Conventional chromatography relies basically on sorption and desorption for the separation of essentially nonionic compounds by a solid sorbent. Ion exchange chromatography relies on the stoichiometric exchange of counter-ions between the exchanger and the mixture of ions being separated. In 1931, chromatography was still essentially an absorbation process which relied on finely divided solids (i.e. aluminium oxide, silica etc.) to separate complex natural organic compounds. The fact that many of these compounds were colored, is the reason for the name of the process - namely, chromatography. The availability of commercial bead-form ion exchange products with uniform particle size, both strong and weak activities, sparked new interests; and the technology known as ion exchange chromatography was born. This happened in the 1940愀, whereas the development of ion exchange, leading up to modern ion exchange materials available commercially, covers a time span of about 140 years.