Nonlinear chromatography is a field that borders both chemical engineering and physical chemistry. In turn, the theory of nonlinear chromatography is the foundation of preparative chromatography, a separation process that has lately become of considerable interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Only chromatography is sufficiently flexible and powerful to satisfy the practical requirements encountered in most difficult separations of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical intermediates.

Since "nonlinear" behaviour is strictly a mathematical concept, it is difficult to leave mathematics...