A critical review of some liquid chromatography systems for the separation of sugars

Summary This contribution to the problems of carbohydrate (sugar) column liquid chromatography, evaluates several currently used systems (reversed phase octadecylated silica gel, amino modified silica gel, cation exchangers on polystyrene and on silica gel basis, polyol derivatised silica gel and anion exchange systems). The elution pattern, analysis time, column efficiency and column life time expectancy are considered to be the important points for this comparison. The application of silica gel-based cation exchanger and of polyol derivatised silica gel is new to this field. The comparison and/or evaluation tries to be critical and to come to a conclusion for the choice of a recommended system.