Eluent

Eluent – solution used to extract one material from another by washing it away. Used frequently in ion chromatography (IC) – think of an eluent as the water washing away sand from gold and pebbles in a sieve. In IC, the eluent (water) washes the solution (sand) containing anions (the gold and pebbles) through the column (sieve) to separate the different analytes present for quantification. Some will be washed away faster (like the gold flakes), some will take longer (like the pebbles), and the amount of time needed to wash the components away will help us determine which is which because we already know about how long it should take each to wash out of solution.