Liquid-solid chromatography retention mechanism

Several different physicochemical models have been proposed to predict and explain the retention behavior in liquid-solid chromatography. The models can be divided into two groups depending on the assumptions made concerning the fundamental mechanism of the chromatographic process. The two assumptions are as follows ... 

However, in normal phase adsorption systems (or liquid-solid chromatography) the interaction of the mobile phase solvent with the solute is often less Important than the competing Interactions of the mobile phase solvent and the solute with the stationary phase adsorption sites. Solute retention is based upon a displacement mechanism. Multicomponent mobile phases and their combination to optimize separations in liquid-solid chromatography have been studied in detail (31-35). Here, solvents are classified as to their interaction with the adsorption surface (Reference 32, in particular) ... 

With binary and ternary supercritical mixtures as chromatographic mobile phases, solute retention mechanisms are unclear. Polar modifiers produce a nonlinear relationship between the log of solute partition ratios (k ) and the percentage of modifier in the mobile phase. The only form of liquid chromatography (LC) that produces non-linear retention is liquid-solid adsorption chromatography (LSC) where the retention of solutes follows the adsorption isotherm of the polar modifier (6). Recent measurements confirm that extensive adsorption of both carbon dioxide (7,8) and methanol (8,9) occurs from supercritical methanol/carbon dioxide mixtures. Although extensive adsorption of mobile phase components clearly occurs, a classic adsorption mechanism does not appear to describe chromatographic behavior of polar solutes in packed column SFC. 

The fundamental references in gas-solid adsorption are the works by Fowler and Guggenheim [12], Everett [13], and Hill [14,15], and the books by Young and Crowell [16], de Boer [17], Kiselev [4], and more recently by Ruthven [18] and T6th [19], who gives a clear, logical, and simple presentation of this topic. We present first a few theoretical results obtained in the study of gas-sohd adsorption, results that have been extended semiempirically to liquid-solid adsorption [18]. Then, we describe the various isotherm models that have been used in the study of retention mechanisms in liquid chromatography. 

Actually, we should separate inverse gas chromatography into inverse gas-liquid chromatography and inverse gas-solid chromatography. The obvious basis of such discrimination is the state of the column content being examined. Polymers and their mixtures, commercial stationary phases, surfactants represent liquids (at the measurement temperature) involving a mixed mechanism of the retention of the test solutes. Modified silicas are examples of solids that have been studied, and, in this case, adsorption effects predominate, while solution partition in graft chains seems to be negligible. These problems will be discussed in details by Papirer and Balard in another chapter of this book. 

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