Nuclear magnetic resonance and the design of chromatographic separations

Abstract

The design of commercial chromatographic separations is an increasingly important subject as the number of products being introduced to the market and pressures for cost containment continue to increase. Of particular concern are the development of more productive columns, dealing with the large numer of design parameters of industrial importance and increasing the scale of production. It is therefore important to relate macroscopic column performance to underlying physico-chemical fundamentals, and important among these are mass transfer and fluid mechanics. It is shown here that well established nuclear magnetic resonance techniques can be helpful in characterizing the diffusion and flow behavior of commercial columns and for obtaining the insights needed to develop new designs. It is also suggested that the design parameters so obtained be incorporated into a non-dispersive formulation for describing column behavior.