Characterization of wide-pore reversed-phase columns for biopolymer separations I. Single-parametric evaluation

Repeatability and reproducibility of retention data and band profiles on reversed-phase liquid chromatography columns

The general goal of this work is to investigate the precision of chromatographic data and to determine which properties of chromatographic columns influence this factor. Chromatographic data were acquired under five different sets of experimental conditions for 30 neutral, acidic and basic test compounds on columns packed with Vydac 218TP C18, a polymeric, wide-pore silica-based stationary phase. Five columns packed with samples from the same batch of this packing material were used to measure the column-to-column reproducibility and six columns packed with material from six different batches to measure the batch-to-batch reproducibility. The parameters studied were the retention time, the retention and separation factors, the hydrophobic and the steric selectivities, the column efficiency, and the tailing factor.