A refined physico-chemical model of solute retention in reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with ternary mobile phases

Summary In our previous publication we have introduced a new model of solute retention in RP-HPLC systems with ternary mobile phases of the B+AB₁+AB₂ type (B: acetonitrile or tetrahydrofuran; AB₁: methanol; AB₂: water). That model proposed no stoichiometric differentiation between acetonitrile and tetrahydrofuran, alternatively present in the solvent system; moreover, it made some very rough assumptions only as to the intermolecular interactions among the mobile phase constituents.This paper introduces a significant refinement to the already established retention model, which is based on the simple quantitative relationships between acetonitrile and tetrahydrofuran, and the remaining components of the ternary liquid system. The refined model is tested with same experimental data.