The physical meaning of the corrected retention volume

Summary The true meanings of the so-called corrected retention volume and the specific retention volume are explained in the light of the recent paper by Davankov.     

Analysis of propantheline bromide and related quaternary ammonium drugs by reversed-phase,ion-pair liquid chromatography with two counterions in the eluent

Summary The addition of appropriate concentrations of an organic amine and an alkylsulphonate to the mobile phase in reversed-phase, ion-pair liquid chromatography can introduce unique selectivity in to the chromatographic system allowing separation of complex mixtures of basic, acidic and neutral compounds. As an example, the methodology for a specific stability-indicating determination of propantheline bromide, a quaternary ammonium anticholinergic agent, on several reversedphase stationary phases, was developed. The retention mechanism was studied and it was concluded that both ion-interaction processes and ion-exchange processes were involved in the separation technique developed with two counterions of opposite charge in the eluent.     

Using new structurally related additive schemes in the precalculation of gas chromatographic retention indices of polychlorinated hydroxybiphenyls on HP-5 stationary phase

A new additive scheme is proposed for the precalculation of gas chromatographic retention indices of complex organic compounds. The principal feature of this approach is the absence of previously calculated I increments for any structural fragments or functional groups in the molecule. Instead, arithmetical operations involving I values of simpler structural analogues of target compounds are used directly. I precalculation for polychlorinated hydroxybiphenyls (839 congeners) on the HP-5 stationary phase was chosen as one of the most important applications of the method under discussion. Such a large number of congeners cannot be obtained as reference samples and their gas chromatographic (GC)-mass spectrometric (MS) identification should therefore be based currently on precalculated I values.     

Optimization strategies in micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography

Summary Computer-assisted procedures for the one-parameter optimization of the surfactant concentration and the concentration of urea or D-glucose as modifiers in micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography have been developed. These procedures permit a rapid optimization of one parameter on the basis of only two experiments. Predicted values are compared to empirically obtained optimum values. The influence of the modifier concentration on the critical micelle concentration of sodium dodecyl sulfate was experimentally determined in buffers commonly employed in micellar electrokinetic chromatography. The alteration of retention factors of solutes caused by the influence of urea addition on the critical micelle concentration of sodium dodecyl sulfate was calculated under the assumption of constant distribution coefficients and compared to experimentally obtained values. It was demonstrated that the addition of urea or of D-glucose does not alter the phase ratio substantially.     

Dicholorbenzyl alkyl ether homologs as retention index markers and internal standards for the analysis of environmental samples using capillary gas chromatography

A homologous series of 2,4-dichlorobenzyl alkyl ethers (DCBEs) have been synthesized and purified for use as retention index calibrants and internal standards. They are stable, sensitive to ECD and FID and ideal for GC-MS, with base peaks at m/z 159/161. The retention index calibration against the n-alkanes for a linear temperature program (LTP) series is given and recommendations made for the most suitable members of the DCBE series for use as internal standards in organochlorine (OC) residue analysis.     

Reproducibility of retention indices measurement of alkylbenzenes on crosslinked methyl silicone phase fused silica capillaries

Summary Reproducibility of the Kovats retention indices of alkylbenzenes was studied on conventional “PONA” fused-silica capillary columns coated with crosslinked dimethyl silicone phase, with a film thickness of 0.5 μm. The data were compared with those obtained on conventional OV-101 columns. The tested PONA columns showed reproducible chromatographic properties, capacity ratios and high efficiencies. Having a standard deviation of s=0.03 i.u. of the retention indices on a single column, the column-to-columns differences were found to be up to 0.3 i.u. Higher indices were determined for crosslinked columns, the difference being in most cases about one i.u.     

Retention of ionizable compounds on HPLC. Modelling retention for neutral and ionizable compounds by linear solvation energy relationships

Summary A global LSER model that relates HPLC retention to mobile phase composition and pH is tested for a varied group of solutes, both neutral and ionizable, in a polymeric column and methanol-water mobile phases. It is compared to the local LSER model developed only for a given mobile phase, i.e., a fixed organic modifier content, and to the global LSER model set only for neutral solutes. The global LSER model for neutral and ionizable solutes requires a few supplementary parameters over the other models tested, but it accounts for retention under any experimental conditions for a given column and methanol-water mobile phases, describing properly the interactions established in the HPLC system (hydrophobicity, hydrogen-bond acidity and basicity, dipolarity/polarizability…). This paper is number 13 of a series with the same general title: “Retention of Ionizable Compounds on HPLC” published in various journals.     

Modelling and prediction of retention in high-performance liquid chromatography by using neural networks

Summary Multi-layer feed-forward neural networks trained with an error back-propagation algorithm have been used to model retention behaviour of liquid chromatography as a function of the composition of the mobile phases. Conventional hydro-organic and micellar mobile phases were considered. Accurate retention modelling and prediction have been achieved using mobile phases defined by two, three and four parameters. With micellar mobile phases, the parameters involved included the concentrations of surfactant and organic modifier, pH and temperature. It is shown that neural networks provide a competitive tool to model varied inherent nonlinear relationships of retention behaviour with respect to the mobile phase parameters. The soft models defined by the weights of the networks are capable of accommodating all types of linear and nonlinear relationships, neural networks being specially useful when the relationships between retention behaviour and the mobile phase parameters are unknown. However, to train neural networks more experimental points than with hard-modelling methods are required, hence the use of the networks is recommended only for those cases where adequate theoretical or empirical models do not exist.     

On the mechanism of solute retention in RP-HPLC systems with B+AB1+AB2 type eluents

Summary Intermolecular interactions between the solute and the moieties constituting the mobile phase significantly contribute to the overall retention pattern of a given solute in a given chromatographic system. In this paper retention of solute is discussed in the case of the B+AB₁+AB₂ type mobile phase, which, in a quasithermodynamic way, can be divided into seven individual moieties. One evaluates the influence of each moiety on solute retention, and refers these regularities to the polarity of the solutes.     

Molecular recognition of biotin, barbital and tolbutamide with new synthetic receptors

We have measured, by means of NMR titrations, the binding constants for the complexes between hosts N,N′-bis(6-methylpyridin-2-yl)-1,3-benzenedicarboxamide (7) and 4-chloro-N,N′-bis(6-methylpyridin-2-yl)-2,6-pyridinedicarboxamide (8, hydrated) with biotin methyl ester (1), N,N′-dimethylurea (2), 2-imidazolidone (3), N,N′-trimethylenurea (4), barbital (5) and tolbutamide (6) as guests. Molecular Mechanics calculations (Monte Carlo Conformational Search, AMBER and OPLS force fields, MacroModel v.8.1) on the complexes formed between the foregoing guests and hosts 7 and 8, comparatively with 4-oxo-N,N′-bis(6-methylpyridin-2-yl)-1,4-dihydro-2,6-pyridinedicarboxamide (9a) have been carried out in order to determine the correlation between experimental and theoretical results and to understand the behaviour of the designed new hosts. Finally we have performed single point DFT [B3LYP/6-31G(d,p)] calculations on the optimised Molecular Mechanics geometries for the complexes between hosts 7-9 and water.