A recent cluster of papers from Yoichiro Ito’s lab has brought the nature of the CCC/CPC column into focus. Very often, the CCC column is considered to be an inert frictionless tube through which the liquids are pumped. However, in reality the tubing does interact at least with the flow of the liquids as well as the compounds being separated. Y. Ito has been studying ways that tubing can participate in the separation process to a greater extent thus getting more separation (mixing and settling) with less tubing (channel) length. The goal of getting more out of less length is particularly attractive if one is making a CCC channel out of expensive materials with an expensive process. The articles I am reading are “flat-twisted tubing” JCA 1216 p. 5265, “triangular helical column” JLCRT 32 p. 560 and “improved spiral tube assembly” JCA 1216 p. 4193. It occurs to me that engineering corners and pockets in the channel actually approaches hydrodynamic CCC to hydrostatic CPC in a way. In any event, it is obvious that spiral disc manufacturing techniques have made it possible to explore channel characteristics that were difficult to produce with a Teflon tube. However, even the lowly Teflon tube can be modified to get more mixing and settling action out of a given length of tubing.