Chromatographic separation of benzo(a)pyrene isomers on nematic liquid crystal GC and polymeric reversed-phase HPLC phases

Abstract

The use of two nematic liquid crystals (BABT and BPhBT) as GC stationary phases for the separation of monohydroxybenzo(a)pyrenes. as their TMS ethers, and monomethylbenzo(a)pyrenes was developed and compared with the separation of these isomers by HPLC using a polymeric ODS reversed-phase column. It was found that while HPLC and GC gave comparable separation of the hydroxy isomers, 10 out of 12 separated, better separation of the methyl isomers was obtained using HPLC. A simultaneous use of both HPLC and GC would resolve the twelve hydroxy isomers in about 70min. The results indicated that HPLC, using polymeric reversed-phase columns, is as powerful a tool as GC using nematic liquid crystal phases, for the separation of benzo(a)pyrene isomers. A discussion of the effect of solute length-to-breadth ratio on elution order is presented.