December 20th 2024
This collection of technical articles, interviews, and news pieces delves into the latest innovations in LC methods, including advance in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC), liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS), and multidimensional LC.
Market Profile: Pharmaceutical Market Demand for Life Science Instrumentation
May 1st 2006Globally, 2005 sales of pharmaceuticals have been estimated at approximately $550 billion. A significant fraction of this amount was due to the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. The top five companies alone were responsible for total revenues of $168 billion, or 30% of the entire market.
Chromatography for Bioanalytical Chemists
May 1st 2006This article looks at current practices in bioanalytical chemistry by examining and critically assessing the various parameters that can be altered to achieve high-speed results with high resolution in LC–MS applications. The decision to opt for gradient or isocratic elution is also discussed.
Successful Gas Chromatography Using Fused-Silica Capillary Columns
March 1st 2006Capillary gas chromatography (GC) is a well-established separation technique. Rick Parmely reviews some of the capillary column basics by investigating a standard test mixture and observing some of the chromatographic effects that can affect peak response, peak shape and column bleed. He provides guidelines for obtaining the best performance from a capillary column. He discusses peak tailing, column overload, ghost peaks and column bleed and speculates on "when to give up." He concludes with a set of fundamental steps to be used in achieving better GC analyses.
Single Calibrant Quantification with HPLC — Fact or Fantasy?
This article assesses the extent to which some familiar HPLC detectors can provide reliable quantitative analytical measurements when no suitable primary reference standard exists. The advantages and limitations of two candidate detector schemes are discussed ? evaporative light-scattering detection (ELSD) and chemiluminescent nitrogen detection (CLND). It was found that when the ERETIC (Electronic REference To access In-vivo Concentrations) method in proton NMR was used as a "gold standard" reference procedure the ability of CLND to provide reliable single calibrant quantification is superior to ELSD. Furthermore, ELSD showed bias towards underestimation of chromatographically-resolved impurities, resulting in an overestimation of analyte purity.
Obtaining More Consistent Results
January 1st 2006LCGC North America and its companion publication, LCGC Europe, are targeted for chromatographers in the United States and Europe, respectively. Sometimes I wonder whether or not the same types of problems are encountered by workers in liquid chromatography (LC) on both sides of the Atlantic. As I write this installment of "LC Troubleshooting," I have just completed three weeks of teaching LC short courses in Europe. I can assure you that the content of the questions I get in these classes is the same, no matter where they are taught. This column is based upon questions gleaned from the most recent courses - you can see that there are no national borders for LC problems.