Q&A The Column www.thecolumn.eu.com February 2007 Confessions of a
Chromatography Expert Self-confessed elder statesman of separation
science, Peter Myers, reveals all about his past in the subject and
enthuses about his new project at Liverpool University. You are one of the
elders of UK chromatography. How did you get into chromatography and what
keeps you there? Not only am I one of the elders but I’m also one of the
few who still actively participate in the subject. I came into
chromatography by mistake. From the age of 13 I wanted to be a
photographer. While in the sixth form one of my teachers suggested I
studied chemistry to understand the wet photographic process. This sounded
good so I set off to the University of Salford in the 1960s to learn more.
It was much more interesting in those days as the courses had not been
sanitized by silly health and safety rules. I continued my photography as
a chemistry undergraduate, taking wedding photographs at the weekends and
becoming photographer for the student newspaper. I chose to stay on for my
PhD before entering photography full-time, but by the end of my doctorate I
decided that maybe photography should become a hobby. It was during my PhD
that I first came across chromatography. My research was into fast
gas-phase reaction kinetics, which were initiated by a shock tube and
monitored by a Bendix time-of-flight mass spectrometer TOF MS . As we had
the shock tube connected to the mass spectrometer MS via a pin-hole leak I
thought that I could also couple a gas chromatograph GC to the mass
spectometer MS . We did this and it was very successful. But as these were
very free days I did the work and moved on to a computing project and it
was never written up. But in my Contact: Peter Myers E-mail:
Peter.Myers@liverpool.ac.uk GC–MS work I came across a Mr Denis Desty.
Denis blew my head off; not only in his enthusiasm for science but also in
the reactions he wanted to do. Denis was always pushing the boundaries. In
my shock tube work I applied pressures of maybe 4–5 bar on the driver
end. Denis wanted to apply 20 bar. In the experiments we later conducted
at his home I wanted to work at the capillary scale, Denis wanted to work
at the macroscale. In one experiment we were looking at how to increase
radial mass transfer. The experiment was performed in a metal drain pipe
four inches in diameter. Down the centre of the drain pipe we had a steel
wire and applied a voltage between this and the outer wall of the drain
pipe. Our mobile phase was hexane because that’s all Denis had. The
voltage applied was in the order of 1000 volts. Unfortunately, the clip
connecting the high voltage to the inner wire broke away creating a spark
and igniting the hexane. The burn marks are still on the ceiling of the
garage! 24
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Column - February 2007