The importance of analytical separation science can hardly be overestimated. We cannot imagine our modern society without clean water, safe food, and effective medication. Maintaining all these achievements would not be possible without analytical separation science. The textbook on the subject does not bring a catalogue of the thousands of possible applications. Below is one attempt to categorize these, creating an arbitrary distinction in four categories, Processes, Products, Nature and Environment.
The categories are not
independent. For example, do surface waters belong with Nature or with
Environment? However, the classification is helpful to recognize the importance
of analytical separation science.
Societal processes are not
restricted to one box. Waste-water treatment plant produce clean surface water or
drinking water that is free of pollutants (and drugs). Natural grains (organic
produce) are an excellent soured of food, but to ensure good harvests pesticides
may be used for crop protection, but residues of these should be minimal in
food. Food and pesticides can be seen as conflicting products.
Many other products are developed
and controlled by analytical separation science. Pharmaceuticals are one of the
most-important types of products. The purity of active pharmaceutical
ingredients (APIs), including enantiomeric purity, is a critical issue in
western medicine. With the advent of modern biopharmaceuticals, such as oligonucleotides,
separation scientists are facing new challenges. Determining effective dosages
with minimal side effects is a process that must be studied before new
medications can be released. Studying the efficacy and monitoring the
composition of traditional (natural) medicines pose even greater challenges to analytical
separation science.
Other samples from nature, such
as plants, cells, organisms tend to be equally complicated. The detailed study
of biosystems through “omics” (proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) have
spurred the development for reliable high-resolution separation methods,
usually hyphenated with mass spectrometry.
