Study of retention in micellar liquid chromatography on a C18 column on the basis of linear solvation energy relationships

Abstract

In this study, 8 solutes (aniline, caffeine, p-cresol, ethyl benzene, methylparaben, phenol, pyridine, and toluene) have been tested in terms of linear solvation energy relationships (LSER). Several micellar liquid chromatography (MLC) systems using cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and a mixture of water with (methanol, n-propanol, and n-butanol) modifiers were characterized using the LSER solvation parameter model. The effects of the surfactant and modifier concentration on the retention in MLC were discussed. LSER model had demonstrated high potential to predict retention factors with high squared correlation coefficients (r2 > 0.99). A comparison of predicted and experimental retention factors suggests that LSER formalism is able to reproduce adequately the experimental retention factors of the solutes studied in the different experimental conditions investigated. This model is a helpful tool to understand the solute-surfactant interactions and evaluate the retention characteristic of micellar liquid chromatography.