Carbon column HPLC and carborane-phase capillary GLC for the separation of polychlorinated biphenyl congeners

Summary With the HPLC carbon column Shandon Hypercarb, the polychlorinated biphenyl congeners are separated by a gradient mixture of acetonitrile and toluene in such a way that the congeners with two (or more) orthochlorine substituents are eluted first, followed by those with one ortho-chlorine and at last the coplanar congeners. Within each group, subfractionation is observed according to the total number of chlorines. For GLC, the SGE HT 5 capillary column exhibits a much more efficient separation of 65 congeners found in Clophen A 40 than the usual DB-5 column, especially for the higher chlorinated congeners. Therefore, the HPLC fractionation on Shandon Hypercarb combined with the GLC on HT 5 offers new possibilities for the analysis of the toxicologically relevant coplanar and mono-ortho substituted PCB congeners.