Retention isotherm effects

The effect of these factors on the adsorption isotherm may be elucidated by reference to specific examples. In the case of the isotherm of Fig. 5.17(a), the nonporous silica had not been re-heated after preparation, but had been exposed to near-saturated water vapour to ensure complete hydroxylation. The isotherm is of Type II and is completely reversible. On the sample outgassed at 1000°C (Fig. 5.17(h)) the isotherm is quite different the adsorption branch is very close to Type III, and there is extrensive hysteresis extending over the whole isotherm, with considerable retention of adsorbate on outgassing at 25°C at the end of the run. 

The simplest mode of IGC is the infinite dilution mode , effected when the adsorbing species is present at very low concentration in a non-adsorbing carrier gas. Under such conditions, the adsorption may be assumed to be sub-monolayer, and if one assumes in addition that the surface is energetically homogeneous with respect to the adsorption (often an acceptable assumption for dispersion-force-only adsorbates), the isotherm will be linear (Henry s Law), i.e. the amount adsorbed will be linearly dependent on the partial saturation of the gas. The proportionality factor is the adsorption equilibrium constant, which is the ratio of the volume of gas adsorbed per unit area of solid to its relative saturation in the carrier. The quantity measured experimentally is the relative retention volume, Vn, for a gas sample injected into the column. It is the volume of carrier gas required to completely elute the sample, relative to the amount required to elute a non-adsorbing probe, i.e. 

Y.V. Kazakevich, R. LoBrutto, F. Chan and T. Patel, Interpretation of the excess adsorption isotherms of organic components on the surface of reversed-phase adsorbents. Effect on the analyte retention. J. Chromatogr.A 913 (2001) 75-87. 

A study of the effects of mobile phase composition on retention and selectivity of some carboxylic acids and amino acids was performed on a commercially available teicoplanin CSP, under analytical conditions, on the profile of the adsorption isotherms of the enantiomers and on the overloaded separation [87]. 

Two assumptions essential to obtain Eqs. (82) or (84) are (i) the hetaeron adsorption has an asymptotic limiting value, and (ii) complexes between the eluite and hetaeron form in the mobile phase. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm is used here because it is simple to manipulate mathematically and because most data on the adsorption of detergents used as hetaerons are reported to obey this relationship as determined directly (207, 209) or from analyses of its effect on chromatographic retention ( 4). 

Fortunately, the effects of most mobile-phase characteristics such as the nature and concentration of organic solvent or ionic additives the temperature, the pH, or the bioactivity and the relative retentiveness of a particular polypeptide or protein can be ascertained very readily from very small-scale batch test tube pilot experiments. Similarly, the influence of some sorbent variables, such as the effect of ligand composition, particle sizes, or pore diameter distribution can be ascertained from small-scale batch experiments. However, it is clear that the isothermal binding behavior of many polypeptides or proteins in static batch systems can vary significantly from what is observed in dynamic systems as usually practiced in a packed or expanded bed in column chromatographic systems. This behavior is not only related to issues of different accessibility of the polypeptides or proteins to the stationary phase surface area and hence different loading capacities, but also involves the complex relationships between diffusion kinetics and adsorption kinetics in the overall mass transport phenomenon. Thus, the more subtle effects associated with the influence of feedstock loading concentration on the... 

---