Uploaded July 2019 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
Hello everyone
“Diffusion is net movement of anything from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in concentration.” - Wikipedia, 2019.🤓
Sounds complicated?🤔 But it is one of the simplest effects used in everyday lab-life! A simple example is the brewing of tea. When you immerse a teabag into hot water, you will see how the colour changes slowly. After some time - even if you don’t stir it - the whole cup of tea will have the same colour. This is due to diffusion since any given system strives to reach equilibrium by equalising the concentration.
In the lab this effect finds various applications. Dialysis is an everyday technique used in the purification process of proteins. You fill the protein into a dialysis tube, which is basically just a very thin membrane. The protein is too big to pass through, but the salts can freely move across the membrane. If you now immerse the dialysis tube into a solution, the salts will move across the membrane to reach a concentration equilibrium. By doing this step multiple times, the salt concentration of your protein solution can be changed slowly.😀
Have a nice Thursday
#NCCR #TechThursday #diffusion #dialysis
Hello everyone
“Diffusion is net movement of anything from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in concentration.” - Wikipedia, 2019.🤓
Sounds complicated?🤔 But it is one of the simplest effects used in everyday lab-life! A simple example is the brewing of tea. When you immerse a teabag into hot water, you will see how the colour changes slowly. After some time - even if you don’t stir it - the whole cup of tea will have the same colour. This is due to diffusion since any given system strives to reach equilibrium by equalising the concentration.
In the lab this effect finds various applications. Dialysis is an everyday technique used in the purification process of proteins. You fill the protein into a dialysis tube, which is basically just a very thin membrane. The protein is too big to pass through, but the salts can freely move across the membrane. If you now immerse the dialysis tube into a solution, the salts will move across the membrane to reach a concentration equilibrium. By doing this step multiple times, the salt concentration of your protein solution can be changed slowly.😀
Have a nice Thursday
#NCCR #TechThursday #diffusion #dialysis
