Chromatographic properties retention time

Gramatica, P., Navas, N. and Todeschini, R. (1998). 3D-Modelling and Prediction by WHIM Descriptors. Part 9. Chromatographic Relative Retention Time and Physico-Chemical Properties of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). Chemom.Intell.Lab.Syst., 40,53-63. 

In chromatography, a series of signals from the detector output is registered as a chromatogram. The qualitative information is derived from the retention time, tms, which is determined by the chromatographic process. Retention time is also dependent on the thermodynamic properties of both the stationary phase... 

The solvent used was 5 %v/v ethyl acetate in n-hexane at a flow rate of 0.5 ml/min. Each solute was dissolved in the mobile phase at a concentration appropriate to its extinction coefficient. Each determination was carried out in triplicate and, if any individual measurement differed by more than 3% from either or both replicates, then further replicate samples were injected. All peaks were symmetrical (i.e., the asymmetry ratio was less than 1.1). The efficiency of each solute peak was taken as four times the square of the ratio of the retention time in seconds to the peak width in seconds measured at 0.6065 of the peak height. The diffusivities obtained for 69 different solutes are included with other physical and chromatographic properties in table 1. The diffusivity values are included here as they can be useful in many theoretical studies and there is a dearth of such data available in the literature (particularly for the type of solutes and solvents commonly used in LC separations). 

The quantitation of products that form in low yields requires special care with HPLC analyses. In cases where the product yield is <1%, it is generally not feasible to obtain sufficient material for a detailed physical characterization of the product. Therefore, the product identification is restricted to a comparison of the UV-vis spectrum and HPLC retention time with those for an authentic standard. However, if a minor reaction product forms with a UV spectrum and HPLC chromatographic properties similar to those for the putative substitution or elimination reaction, this may lead to errors in structural assignments. Our practice is to treat rate constant ratios determined from very low product yields as limits, until additional evidence can be obtained that our experimental value for this ratio provides a chemically reasonable description of the partitioning of the carbocation intermediate. For example, verification of the structure of an alkene that is proposed to form in low yields by deprotonation of the carbocation by solvent can be obtained from a detailed analysis of the increase in the yield of this product due to general base catalysis of carbocation deprotonation.14,16... 

Measurements of gas chromatographic retention time are often used as a fast and easy method of estimating vapor pressure. These estimated pressures are related to the gas/substrate partition coefficient, which can be regarded as a ratio of solubility of the substance in the gas to that in the substrate, both solubilities being of the substance in the liquid state. As a result the estimated vapor pressures are of the liquid state. To obtain the solid vapor pressure requires multiplication by the fugacity ratio. It is important to establish if the estimated and reported property is of the vapor or liquid. 

Enantiomers have identical chemical and physical properties in the absence of an external chiral influence. This means that 2 and 3 have the same melting point, solubility, chromatographic retention time, infrared spectroscopy (IR), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra. However, there is one property in which chiral compounds differ from achiral compounds and in which enantiomers differ from each other. This property is the direction in which they rotate plane-polarized light, and this is called optical activity or optical rotation. Optical rotation can be interpreted as the outcome of interaction between an enantiomeric compound and polarized light. Thus, enantiomer 3, which rotates plane-polarized light in a clockwise direction, is described as (+)-lactic acid, while enantiomer 2, which has an equal and opposite rotation under the same conditions, is described as (—)-lactic acid. 

Normal-phase liquid chromatography is thus a steric-selective separation method. The molecular properties of steric isomers are not easily obtained and the molecular properties of optical isomers estimated by computational chemical calculation are the same. Therefore, the development of prediction methods for retention times in normal-phase liquid chromatography is difficult compared with reversed-phase liquid chromatography, where the hydrophobicity of the molecule is the predominant determinant of retention differences. When the molecular structure is known, the separation conditions in normal-phase LC can be estimated from Table 1.1, and from the solvent selectivity. A small-scale thin-layer liquid chromatographic separation is often a good tool to find a suitable eluent. When a silica gel column is used, the formation of a monolayer of water on the surface of the silica gel is an important technique. A water-saturated very non-polar solvent should be used as the base solvent, such as water-saturated w-hexane or isooctane. 

One component of the eluent should have properties similar to those of the analytes, and this solvent is diluted by another solvent to control the retention time. The basic idea can be understood from the chromatographic behaviour of phthalic acid esters and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). This approach can be applied to the separation procedure for a variety of stationary phase materials, including silica gel, polystyrene gel, and ion-exchangers. 

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