Separation of mixtures of solvents with wide bore capillary columns connected in series

The gas chromatographic separation of the components of a complex mixture of industrial solvents, not possible on a single stationary phase owing to coelution of some of the compounds, has been achieved on two serially connected wide bore capillary columns of different polarity. The analysis of a mixture of twenty five compounds was optimized using the serial gas chromatography theory of Purnell and Williams. The capacity factors of sample components measured with the two columns coupled in series were found to agree with those predicted by theory, regardless of the order in which they were connected.     

Prediction of soil organic carbon partition coefficients by soil column liquid chromatography

To avoid the limitation of the widely used prediction methods of soil organic carbon partition coefficients (KOC) from hydrophobic parameters, e.g., the n-octanol/water partition coefficients (KOW) and the reversed phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) retention factors, the soil column liquid chromatographic (SCLC) method was developed for KOC prediction. The real soils were used as the packing materials of RP-HPLC columns, and the correlations between the retention factors of organic compounds on soil columns (ksoil) and KOC measured by batch equilibrium method were studied. Good correlations were achieved between ksoil and KOC for three types of soils with different properties. All the square of the correlation coefficients (R2) of the linear regression between log ksoil and log KOC were higher than 0.89 with standard deviations of less than 0.21. In addition, the prediction of KOC from KOW and the RP-HPLC retention factors on cyanopropyl (CN) stationary phase (kCN) was comparatively evaluated for the three types of soils. The results show that the prediction of KOC from kCN and KOW is only applicable to some specific types of soils. The results obtained in the present study proved that the SCLC method is appropriate for the KOC prediction for different types of soils, however the applicability of using hydrophobic parameters to predict KOC largely depends on the properties of soil concerned.     

Peak recognition technique by a computer program copying the human judgement

Summary It is still difficult to determine peaks and peak boundaries properly, though peak recognition is very important for the precision of quantitative data. A new computer program overcomes these problems using a method which is adapted from human judgements. The algorithm was developed for HPLC but can also be used in other fields of analytical chemistry.     

The theoretical basis of column chromatography in multicomponent separations. Part 2: Peak capacity. Column systems with good selectivity

The selectivity of a column system, S, defined by equation 28, includes a variation coefficient (β) of plate number with capacity ratio which has a large influence on the peak capacity, as shown in Fig. 18. Some typical chromatograms are given. In order to predict S for a column system from Kovat's Index, equations 40 and 41 are given to calculate the constant of the carbon number rule for squalane at different temperatures or for different stationary phases. The specific retention value of heptane on squalane at different temperatures can be calculated from equation 42. The nonpolarity index, defined by equation 43, was used to calculate the retention value of heptane on various stationary phases. In liquid chromatography, the order of elution may be reversed by changing the composition of the eluent on the same chemically bonded silica (manufactured in China). The linear relations between the log retention values of different kinds of solutes or of a single solute on the silicas of different surface areas when using the same eluent are given.     

Chromatographic retention prediction and octanol-water partition coefficient determination of monobasic weak acidic compounds in ion-suppression reversed-phase liquid chromatography using acids as ion-suppressors

Although simple acids, replacing buffers, have been widely applied to suppress the ionization of weakly ionizable acidic analytes in reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC), none of the previously reported works focused on the systematic studies about the retention behavior of the acidic solutes in this ion-suppression RPLC mode. The subject of this paper was therefore to investigate the retention behavior of monobasic weak acidic compounds using acetic, perchloric and phosphoric acids as the ion-suppressors. The apparent octanol-water partition coefficient (K^″ow) was proposed to calibrate the octanol-water partition coefficient (Kow) of these weak acidic compounds, which resulted in a better linear correlation with log kw, the logarithm of the hypothetical retention factor corresponding to neat aqueous fraction of hydroorganic mobile phase. This log K^″ow−log kw linear correlation was successfully validated by the results of monocarboxylic acids and monohydrating phenols, and moreover by the results under diverse experimental conditions for the same solutes. This straightforward relationship not only can be used to effectively predict the retention values of weak acidic solutes combined with Snyder-Soczewinski equation, but also can offer a promising medium for directly measuring Kow data of these compounds via Collander equation. In addition, the influence of the different ion-suppressors on the retention of weak acidic compounds was also compared in this RPLC mode.     

Limit of detection estimator for second-order bilinear calibration

A new approach is developed for estimating the limit of detection in second-order bilinear calibration with the generalized rank annihilation method (GRAM). The proposed estimator is based on recently derived expressions for prediction variance and bias. It follows the latest IUPAC recommendations in the sense that it concisely accounts for the probabilities of committing both types I and II errors, i.e. false positive and false negative declarations, respectively. The estimator has been extensively validated with simulated data, yielding promising results.     

Molecular entity vacancy model

A novel molecular entity vacancy model was proposed to describe thermodynamic properties in a multicomponent solution system using its binary interaction parameters only. A derivation of the model for its general expression has been shown in detail. Under some special conditions, this model may be reduced to Flory–Huggins equation, Wilson equation and non-random two liquids (NRTL) equation as well as molecular interaction volume model (MIVM), respectively, and can be verified by Gibbs–Duhem equation, and can express thermodynamic properties of partially miscible systems. The predicted activities are in good agreement with experimental data of some liquid alloys. The results show that the model is of better predictability and reliability because it has a certain physical basis.     

Densities and mixing volumes of mixtures of fluorobenzene, α,α,α-trifluorotoluene, tert-butylmethyl ether, and ethanol at temperature 298.15 K and pressure 0.1 MPa

The volumetric properties were evaluated from density data for the binary mixtures of (fluorobenzene + tert-butylmethyl ether), (α,α,α-trifluorotoluene + tert-butylmethyl ether), (tert-butylmethyl ether + ethanol), and the ternary mixtures of (fluorobenzene + tert-butylmethyl ether + ethanol) and (α,α,α-trifluorotoluene + tert-butylmethyl ether + ethanol). The observed densities were obtained by means of a vibrating-tube densimeter at the temperature 298.15 K and the pressure 101 kPa.The excess molar volumes of the ternary mixtures were estimated from binary solution data using several empirical equations with mean standard deviation less than 0.03 cm³·mol^-1. Stable chemical cross-associations among the molecules forming the mixtures were revealed.     

Multivariate Cramér-Rao inequality for prediction and efficient predictors

We derive and discuss a matricial Cramér-Rao type inequality for the quadratic prediction error matrix. A study of the attainment of the bound follows. Then we introduce an unbiased predictor for a bivariate Poisson process and prove that it is efficient, i.e. its quadratic error attains the Cramér-Rao bound.