Equilibrating silica flash chromatography columns is something I always do.  There are chemists who see this as an unnecessary, time-and-solvent-wasting step.  However, because getting consistent, predictable results is a priority for me, I equilibrate to remove the variability that can be caused by heat generated as solvent initially contacts the silica. Consistency is really important when running flash column chromatography because re-runs are time consuming and may put your compound at risk.

In this post, I examine the role of equilibration speed and duration to show its impact, or lack there of, on purification performance.

This is an interesting question that does not have a straightforward answer. In fact, there are many materials that are potentially useful sorbents for dry loading crude mixtures. Some of the more popular are silica, diatomaceous earth (e.g. ISOLUTE® HM-N, Celite®), alumina, and Florisil®. The sorbent choice can influence your purification results because each of the available media have different chemistry and capacity. In most cases, sample/sorbent reactivity really is not a major concern, though it can occur. What is important is the sorbent’s capacity to adsorb/absorb all of your sample and the ratio of your crude sample to the amount of dry load sorbent.