Packed capillary HPLC: An attractive separation technique for small organic molecules

Abstract

The feasibility of using packed capillary HPLC for the analysis of small organic molecules has been demonstrated by three examples: the separation of glucose and sucrose telomers, the separation of the different components of a solvent extraction reagent, and the separation of mono-, di-, and trioleins, all of which have been achieved with packed capillary columns of 0.32 mm inner diameter and eluent flow rates of 3 microliters per minute. Application to the analysis of the solvent extraction reagents has shown that this technique can be used as a quantitative tool in just the same way as any conventional HPLC method. The feasibility of a direct packed capillary HPLC – mass spectrometry interface has been demonstrated for the glucose telomer separation; direct coupling is only possible because of the microliter flow rates employed by the technique.