My dry extract does not dissolve completely in ethyl acetate or methanol also. I'm wondering if I dissolve my sample in ethyl acetate, or methanol, the results will be affected? Thank you very much.
Use the solvent in which your extract dissolves completely. Otherwise some important constituents might be lost as undissolved material and these is definitely going to affect your further results.
The samples have to be completely dissolved because the remaining solid could contain relevant analytes and your TLC wont be a faithful representation of the extract.
Probably they are very polar compounds that are not possible to analyze with silica gel or even, it could be dust from a bad filtration. Take into account that.
Basically, you can use any solvent. The important thing is leave to dry the spots in the plate very well. In the case of ethyl acetate it is fast and in methanol it can take a bit more time.
If you use a high boiling point solvent (e.g. DMSO or DMF), you have to dry them several minutes in a high vacuum chamber.
Use the solvent in which your extract dissolves completely. Otherwise some important constituents might be lost as undissolved material and these is definitely going to affect your further results.
I think you should use the solvent which could dissolve your extract completely. This is due to the undissolved substances might affect the accuracy of your TLC results. Also, you might lost some very crucial portion of your compound of interest or significant during the TLC analysis. So, my advice to you is to try and figure out the other solvent which could dissolves your extract completely in your case. Cheers!
Thanks for the opinion. I tried with methanol, the results on TLC does not show as good as ethyl acetate. Even the major band is not there already when i try to dissolve with methanol. Don't know what is the problem yet.
When you dissolve the sample in ethyl acetate, the band separation is good always. Separation of the sample is difficult ,when we dissolve the sample in methanol.. The same problem, I am also experiencing.
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