The Thermodynamic Treatment of Solute Distribution in Chromatography

Classical thermodynamics gives an expression that relates the equilibrium constant (the distribution coefficient (K)) to the change in free energy of a solute when transferring from one phase to the other. The derivation of this relationship is fairly straightforward, but will not be given here, as it is well explained in virtually all books on classical physical chemistry [1,2]. 

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classical thermodynamics gives another expression for the standard free energy which separates it into two parts, the standard free enthalpy and the standard free entropy. 

Equation (1) can be viewed in an over-simplistic manner and it might be assumed that it would be relatively easy to calculate the retention volume of a solute from the distribution coefficient, which, in turn, could be calculated from a knowledge of the standard enthalpy and standard entropy of distribution. Unfortunately, these properties of a distribution system are bulk properties. They represent, in a single measurement, the net effect of a large number of different types of molecular interactions which, individually, are almost impossible to separately identify and assess quantitatively. 

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