Modeling the effects of different mobile phase compositions and temperatures on the retention of various analytes in HPLC.

A mathematical model is proposed for representing the combined effects of mobile phase solvent composition and temperature on the retention of various analytes in HPLC. The applicability of the model in describing the retention of four macrolides in aqueous mixtures of methanol and acetonitrile determined at 20-80 degrees C in various volume fractions of the organic modifiers was shown. The mean percentage deviation (MPD) was computed as an accuracy criterion in which the overall MPD of four analytes investigated in this work was 3.9+/-1.5% (N=72). The proposed model could be reduced to two simpler versions. The first version concerning the retention data of analytes in one organic modifier at various temperatures produced for the retention description of the above experimental system as well as for the retention of three benzodiazepines in aqueous mixtures of methanol at 25-40 degrees C an overall MPD of 3.6+/-1.8%. The more reduced version of the model for calculating the retention factor of one analyte in a given organic modifier at various temperatures produced an overall MPD of 1.7+/-1.1% for both the experimental systems studied. The accuracy of the proposed model is compared with recent models to predict the retention of an analyte with respect to solvent component of the mobile phase and the temperature of column in which the results were comparable. The main advantage of the proposed model is its capability to predict the retention of various analytes considering (i) temperature of the column, (ii) the mobile phase solvent composition, (iii) the chemical structure of the analytes and (iv) the nature of organic modifier.