It was a hot sultry afternoon when, I was assigned a work to deliver a presentation on groundbreaking science in chromatographic field.

Being in the field for five years, I have yet to come across any such befitting work to be termed, “groundbreaking,” in separation science.

I had foreseen my schedule to be busy for some weeks as I will scroll and scan every single paper written by researchers trying to prove their work as ,”novel”,” out-of-this-world,” and finally “path-breaking.” Days and nights were spent to come up with any article that proved to be ‘ground breaking”. Nothing sufficed my instinctive needs and the deadline was just around the corner. Interestingly, I came across a paper on, “Ice Chromatography.” Researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology came up with an innovative idea of elucidating water-ice as the stationary phase in HPLC.

Well, all this while we knew that there is no chromatography in Antarctica!!!

A simple theory of hydrogen bonding was incorporated in understanding the novel idea. Novel ideas stand on simple concepts formulated in the days of yore.  This article parched my instincts in the summer day.The meteorologists, geoscientists will not understand my tacit enthusiasm, as they are already known to study water-ice properties. The picture is entirely different in laboratories, where one works with toxic chemicals and solvents. 

With the current environment and safety concerns on ever changing paradigms of the natural world, this seemed as a groundbreaking science. Ice chromatography is an ecological separation tool.

This will form my seminar topic and would love to debate on the age-old concepts.