Twist on Packing Analytical Columns for Reversed Phase Liquid Chromatography

Liquid chromatography is one of the most widely used analytical techniques for the separation of complex mixtures. Great advances have been made in the last twenty years in column technology, i.e. stationary phases, but few advances have been made in column packing technology. In this study, two new methods for packing analytical reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) columns are introduced: radially spinning slurry packing and surfactant aided slurry packing. The column performance of columns packed by the traditional slurry packing procedure, the radially spinning slurry packing procedure, and the surfactant aided slurry packing procedure was evaluated and compared. It was determined that the different slurry and pushing solvents utilized during the different packing methods had little effect on column performance. The packed beds of columns packed by the traditional, radially spinning, and surfactant aided slurry packing procedures were investigated by generating a van Deemter plot for columns packed by each method. These van Deemter plots indicated that columns packed by the radially spinning slurry packing technique and the surfactant aided slurry packing technique had different bed structures than those of the control columns packed by the traditional slurry packing procedure. The columns packed by the radially spinning slurry packing procedure process had better column-to-column reproducibility in %RSD of retention time and the capacity factor than columns packed by the traditional slurry packing procedure and the surfactant aided slurry packing procedure. Due to the difficulty of packing columns by the radially spinning technique, the use of a surfactant modifier when packing RPLC columns according to the traditional slurry packing procedure would be much more appealing to column manufacturers.