solutbrott

Solutbrott is a term used in Swedish to describe the breakthrough of solutes, the point at which dissolved substances cease to be fully retained by a separation medium and begin to appear in the downstream stream. The concept is most common in chromatography, but it also appears in membrane filtration and environmental leaching contexts.

In chromatography, solutbrott refers to the moment when an analyte breaks through the adsorbent bed and is detected in the effluent, signaling that the column’s retention capacity for that solute is exhausted. The appearance of solutes in the outlet indicates limited sorption sites remaining and can lead to reduced separation performance and contamination of later fractions.

In membrane filtration, solutbrott describes the passage of solutes into the permeate, often due to saturation of the membrane, pore size limitations, concentration polarization, or fouling that alters selectivity and permeability.

In environmental and soil contexts, solutbrott can denote the leaching or transport of nutrients or contaminants beyond a containment layer or root zone during rainfall or irrigation, potentially leading to loss of target substances or groundwater contamination.

Causes of solutbrott include saturated or exhausted sorption capacity, high loading rates, competitive adsorption among solutes, changes in pH, ionic strength, or temperature, and physical fouling of media. It is typically analyzed with breakthrough curves, plotting the ratio of effluent concentration to feed concentration (C/C0) against time or volume processed.

Prevention and management focus on extending retention capacity and ensuring stable separation performance, through deeper or more selective media, multi-stage or staged elution, flow-rate optimization, pre-treatment, regeneration, or replacement of media.

See also: chromatography, adsorption, membrane filtration, breakthrough curve, remediation.