Facilitated column selection in pharmaceutical analyses using a simple column classification system.

In this paper, the performance of a previously developed classification system applied to pharmaceutical chromatographic analyses, is investigated. The separation of seven different drug substances from their respective impurities was studied. The chromatographic procedure for acetylsalicylic acid, clindamycin hydrochloride, buflomedil hydrochloride, chloramphenicol sodium succinate, nimesulide and phenoxymethylpenicillin was performed according to the corresponding European Pharmacopoeia (Ph. Eur.) monograph. The separation of dihydrostreptomycin sulphate was performed according to the literature. It is shown that the column ranking system is a helpful tool in the selection of a suitable column in these analyses.