Systematic Study of Feed Temperature Control to High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

Some system factors like poor packing, distribution system and viscous heat dissipation may result in the core of a solute concentration band goes faster, forming a parabolic concentration band and reducing column efficiency. Feed temperature control method, which is to appropriately control eluent at the column inlet at a temperature lower than the wall temperature, can modify the band shape and counteract such negative effects. Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT, the present work investigated the effect of a variety of system factors on the temperature distribution in a chromatographic column and the optimal temperature difference between the inlet and the column wall in feed temperature control, ΔTopt. It was found that the factors affecting flow distribution have no significant effect on temperature distribution but significantly affect ΔTopt. The factors strongly related to temperature distribution might not interfere with ΔTopt. The reason is that the principle of feed temperature control is to reshape the solute concentration bond, which depends on flow distribution. This work also found that for a given column and a given eluent, ΔTopt was independent of the Reynolds No ρul/η and Peclet No derived from component balance uL/Dax. Δopt depends on Peclet No derived from energy balance,uLρfcpf/λeff, but the correlation between them is uncertain due to the unclear effect of λeff on Δopt.