Friday, September 11, 2015

Doing High-Performance Liquid Chromatography The Right Way

By Kaira G. Tafoya


High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a separation technique that can be used for the analysis of organic molecules and ions. HPLC is based on mechanisms of adsorption, partition and ion exchange, depending on the type of stationary phase used. HPLC involves a solid stationary phase, normally packed inside a stainless-steel column, and a liquid mobile phase. Separation of the components of a solution results from the difference in the relative distribution ratios of the solutes between the two phases.

Modern high performance liquid chromatography or HPLC has its roots in this separation, the first form of liquid chromatography. The chromatographic process has been significantly improved over the last hundred years, yielding greater separation efficiency, versatility and speed.

High Performance Liquid Chromatography provides reliable quantitative precision and accuracy along with a high linear dynamic range to allow determination of API and related substances in a single run. A convenient method for sample preparation for solid dosage forms is dispersion in water or aqueous media modified with acetonitrile or methanol .HPLC offers several possibilities for separation of chiral molecules into their respective enantiomers. These include precolumn derivatization to form diastereomers. Alternately, specialty columns prepared with cyclodextrins or special chiral moieties as stationary phases maybe used .In short HPLC, particularly reverse phase HPLC is the most popular choice for quantitative analysis in the pharmaceutical industry. HPLC has contributed to analytical solutions in diverse fields such as pharmaceuticals, foods, life sciences, environment, forensics, etc. In the present module we shall discuss some application areas in pharmaceuticals and foods.

HPLC can be used in both qualitative and quantitative applications that is for both compound identification and quantification. Normal phase HPLC is only rarely used now, almost all HPLC separation can be performed in reverse phase. Reverse phase HPLC (RPLC) is ineffective in for only a few separation types; it cannot separate inorganic ions (they can be separated by ion exchange chromatography). It cannot separate polysaccharides (they are too hydrophilic for any solid phase adsorption to occur), nor polynucleotides (they adsorb irreversibly to the reverse phase packing). Lastly, incredibly hydrophobic compounds cannot be separated effectively by RPLC (there is little selectivity). Aside from these few exceptions, RPLC is used for the separation of almost all other compound varieties.

RPLC can be used to effectively separate similar simple and aromatic hydrocarbons, even those that differ only by a single methylene group. RPLC effectively separates simple amines, sugars, lipids, and even pharmaceutically active compounds. RPLC is also used in the separation of amino acids, peptides, and proteins. Finally RPLC is used to separate molecules of biological origin. The determination of caffeine content in coffee products is routinely done by RPLC in commercial applications in order to guarantee purity and quality of ground coffee. HPLC is a useful addition to an analytical arsenal, especially for the separation of a sample before further analysis.




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