Separation of Chlorinated Phenols by Isocratic High-Performance Liquid Chromatography on Reverse Phase Column

Optimization of the separation of chlorophenols with stepwise gradient elution in reversed phase liquid chromatography

An optimization technique based on gradient elution was used to separate eleven chlorophenols by reversed phase liquid chromatography. The separation was based on gradient elution with a stepwise variation pattern of the volume fraction of organic modifier, phi, in the mobile phase. Initially, two-, three-, and four-parameter equations which describe the dependence of ln k' upon phi, were examined for their ability to fit the experimental data. It was found that, among these equations, the four-parameter equation gave the best fit of the experimental data. In addition to separation optimization, a non-linear least squares program with a grid search for initial estimates was used to determine the best variation pattern. The best variation pattern was obtained with phi(1)= 0.27, phi(2)= 0.39, phi(3)= 0.62, t(1) = 33 min, and t(2) = 11 min. This pattern allowed the chromatographic separation of the chlorophenols with a good resolution and a total analysis time of 51 min. Good agreement was observed between predicted and experimental values of the retention times under optimal condition.

Multi-criteria decision making in micellar liquid chromatographic separation of chlorophenols

Simultaneous optimization of separation quality and analysis time of the micellar liquid chromatography of nine chlorophenol isomers was investigated. The effect on retention of three experimental parameters was studied using multivariate analysis. The factors studied were the concentration of sodium dodecyl sulfate, propanol content, and pH of the mobile phase. The experiments were performed according to the face-centered cube central composite design and the inverse form of the experimental retention times of analytes was fitted to polynomial models. The results of the analysis of variance showed that the models obtained explain over 99% of the variance observed in the chromatograms. The good predictive ability of the models was verified by high correlation coefficient (R2 > 0.99) and F ratio values for the plots of predicted cross-validated versus experimental retention times. The study showed that the use of the Pareto-Optimality method, an approach from multi-criteria decision making, allows selection of the best possible combinations of separation quality and analysis time in micellar liquid chromatography of chlorophenols.