Retention Measurements on Closely Eluting Peaks

Marcel Dekker, Inc. 270 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 

The composite envelope is then plotted over the envelope of each individual peak. It is seen that the actual retention difference, if taken from the maxima of the envelope, will give a value of less than 80% of the true retention difference. Furthermore as the peaks become closer this error increases rapidly. Unfortunately, this type of error is not normally taken into account by most data processing software. It follows that, if such data was used for solute identification, or column design, the results can be grossly in error. 

Furthermore, in the example given, the peaks were considered to be truly Gaussian in shape. Asymmetric peaks can distort the position or the peak maximum of the envelope to an even greater extent. In general, the retention time of a composite peak should never be assumed to have a specific relationship with those of the unresolved pair. 

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