At the crossroad towards faster chromatography

Abstract

The need for speed in chromatography has long been a topic of interest and has resulted in a number of technological advancements in recent years, particularly with the development of sub-2 µm particle packed columns following the advent of Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHCPLC). In order to use columns packed with these small particles, it is necessary to utilise very high pressures to drive mobile phase through the column. However, a price paid for using high pressures is an increase in the impact of detrimental viscous frictional heating effects. An alternative approach for quicker separations on sub-2 µm packed columns is to use supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). SFC has two important advantages compared to UHPLC: (1) the supercritical fluid mobile phase has a substantially lower viscosity than liquid mobile phases, and (2) CO2 sourced through recycling is more environmentally friendly than organic solvents used as components in UHPLC mobile phases. SFC, however, has not been readily adopted due to the difficulties in using LC predictive equations in the SFC environment. Thus chromatographers optimizing the speed of separations are faced with the choice of either HPLC with its limitations or SFC with unpredictability. The work conducted in this thesis explores these options in order to gain further insight on these limitations and provide a scope for potential directions in the future.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English