Investigation and comparison of 5 % diphenyl – 95 % dimethyl polysiloxane capillary columns

Abstract

In gas chromatography, for the analysis, the most important thing is the well-chosen column. After having decided about which stationary phase is the best for our measurement and we know the length, the inner diameter and film thickness, we can buy the column from a lot of manufacturers. The products of these manufacturers’ look similar to each other, but they are different, because of the different manufacturing technologies. These differences could have significant influence on the separation. It is so important to compare the „same” columns, despite the manufacturers’ efforts to produce the best quality columns. 5 % diphenyl – 95 % dimethyl polysiloxane stationary phase is widely used. Its slight polarity makes it able to determine very different compounds from the alkanes, through volatiles, drugs, fatty acid methyl esters, amines or phenols. In our work, we tested 5 % diphenyl – 95 % dimethyl polysiloxane stationary phase columns with an 8-component mixture. These columns were from different manufacturers. During isothermal conditions, we determined the height equivalent of theoretical plates on 8 linear velocity level. We represented these parameters as the function of linear velocity. With a constant linear velocity, we measured the excess sorption enthalpy and entropy. From the chromatograms we spotted differences in the retention and in resolution, which is important if we use the column for volatiles or for complex samples. With these parameters we can show many differences between the columns. These parameters have significant influence when we want to use our column for a given task.