title: Effect of the interface on separation in multicapillary gas chromatography-based hyphenated techniques for speciation analysis of organometallic compounds.
abstract: This paper reports the effect of transfer line (TL) internal diameter (i.d.) on gas chromatographic separation characteristics such as efficiency and speed, when a multicapillary (MC) column is used for speciation analysis of mercury. Five different TL consisting of fused-silica capillaries with 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.32, and 0.53 mm i.d. are compared. The separation efficiency and total chromatographic run time are critically affected by the i.d. of the TL. Narrow capillaries (i.d.< or =0.20 mm) produce minimum peak dispersion whereas wide capillaries result in narrow peaks and shorter chromatographic analysis times. A thermodynamic approach is proposed to describe the motion of the analytes through the separation column and TL. The model provides good agreement with the experimental data for high pressures (> or =35 psig) and wide TL (> or =0.25 mm i.d.).
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Campus Drie Eiken, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610 Wilrijk, Belgium.
authors.forename: Petru
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jitaru
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Birzu
authors.forename: Raluca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mocanu
authors.forename: Freddy C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Adams
mesh_terms: D002849:Chromatography, Gas / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D009942:Organometallic Compounds / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D009942:Organometallic Compounds