Forecasting Retention Times in Temperature-Programmed Gas Chromatography

Abstract

A simple and quick iterative method is proposed to calculate retention times under any non-isothermal condition using only a few sets of isothermal experiments. The hypothesis is that, in temperature-programmed gas chromatography, the column acts as a series of short elements undergoing a succession of isothermal stages. Two different tools are studied for this method : a spreadsheet and a computer program (a worksheet of Excel and a Qbasic program are presented as examples). The differences between the forecasts and the experimental retention times are less than 1%. A satisfactory number of elements lies between 20 and 50 elements per meter.