Retention-index based vapor pressure estimation for polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) by gas chromatography

Abstract

Vapor pressures for 133 individual polychlorobiphenyl congeners as subcooled liquids were determined by two different approaches on the basis of gas-chromatographic retention indices obtained with two different non-polar stationary phases. The approach which is based on the retention indices obtained on a methyl-50% octyl polysiloxane phase (SB Octyl 50) and on reference vapor pressures of PCB congeners, and thus contains less approximations, should yield more accurate results than the method which uses retention indices obtained on a methyl polysiloxane phase (OV 101) and reference vapor pressure data taken from the n-alkanes of the retention index system. A systematic deviation is observed between the values obtained by the two different methods. The first method gives constantly slightly higher values for the vapor pressure. This will be caused by the different separation characteristics of the two non-polar stationary phases used, as well as by uncertainties in the reference data for the vapor pressure calculations.