The effect of temperature on single-column ion-chromatography of metal ions.

Temperature is shown to be a valuable parameter for optimizing single-column ion-chromatographic separations of metal ions. With a perchloric acid eluent, retention times of bivalent metal ions decrease with an increase in system temperature, but with doubly protonated amines as eluents the retention times increase with an increase in temperature. Consequently, increasing the system temperature improves separations of bivalent metal ions when p-phenylenediamine dilhydrochloride is used as the eluent. Both conductivity detection and post-column reaction followed by spectrophotometric detection are suitable detection methods at above-ambient temperatures.