An advanced, interactive, high-performance liquid chromatography simulator and instructor resources

Abstract

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) simulation software has long been recognized as an effective educational tool, yet many of the existing HPLC simulators are either too expensive, outdated, or lack many important features necessary to make them widely useful for educational purposes. Here, a free, open-source HPLC simulator is described that we developed. The Web-based simulator is uniquely sophisticated, yet accessible to a diverse user group with varied expertise in HPLC. It features intuitive controls and indicators for a wide range of experimental conditions, and it displays a graphical chromatogram to provide immediate feedback when conditions are changed. The simulator can be found at hplcsimulator.org. At that Web site, a number of example problem sets are also provided that educators can easily use to incorporate the simulator into their curriculum. Comments from students who used the simulator in an undergraduate analytical chemistry class were positive. © 2013 The American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.