IMPROVEMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE OF SINGLE-COLUMN ION CHROMATOGRAPHY BY COMPUTERIZED DETECTOR SIGNAL-PROCESSING AND CORRELATION CHROMATOGRAPHY

The performance of medium-quality ion chromatographic equipment was improved by using pseudo-random sample introduction correlation chromatography (CC). The importance of the digital preprocessing of the detector signal prior to decorrelation was demonstrated for realization of the multiplex advantage of the CC method. The detection limits obtained for single-column ion chromatography using conductivity detection were 0.1, 0.12 and 0.17 ppm for Cl-, NO3- and SO42- ions, respectively. Using the same apparatus without CC the detection limits are in the range 1-3 ppm.