Solvation parameter model of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography separations.

A solvation parameter model was used to generate comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC x GC) retention diagrams for 54 solutes on four different stationary phase combinations. Retention diagrams are plots used to predict the relative position of solutes in GC x GC chromatograms. In this study, retention diagrams were based entirely on solute and stationary phase descriptors taken from the literature. The temperature-averaged values of the stationary phase descriptors were used to further simplify the model. The relative positions of the solutes in the retention diagrams were compared with experimentally obtained GC x GC chromatograms. Excellent agreement was observed for each column combination. The model was found to generate primary retention time predictions with standard errors that were approximately 1% of the range of the experimental values and secondary retention time predictions with standard errors that were approximately 5% of the range of the experimental values. It is concluded that the GC x GC solvation parameter model is sufficiently accurate to aid in the identification of optimal column combinations.