Orthogonal screening system of columns for supercritical fluid chromatography

The application of supercritical fluid chromatography is expanding nowadays, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry and for natural extracts. In order to select appropriate columns from the continuously increasing number of potentially suitable ones, a test that evaluates stationary phases properties, based on the solvation parameter model, was performed earlier. In this study, it is investigated whether the number of stationary phases can be reduced to an optimized set with only highly orthogonal systems. Such a set of orthogonal chromatographic systems having different selectivities may provide the initial separation for method development. Moreover, it was considered important to include systems with good overall separation performance in our final set. Thus the columns are also selected based on their ability to provide sharp and symmetric peaks. An example application based on the analysis of seven sunscreen molecules is presented as a validation of the suggested column set. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.