COMPUTER-SIMULATION STUDY OF SIZE-EXCLUSION CHROMATOGRAPHY WITH SIMULTANEOUS VISCOMETRY AND LIGHT-SCATTERING MEASUREMENTS

The integration of an on-line viscosity or light scattering (LS) detector with size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) improves the accuracy with, which polymer molecular mass distributions can be measured. The coupling of a viscometer and a light scattering detector in one SEC instrument potentially offers improved precision and dynamic range for SEC polymer conformation studies. However, the increased complexity of these experiments and the subsequent data handling introduce a number of problems not present in conventional SEC. A computer simulation of the multiple detector SEC experiment was developed in order to study these effects in detail. The computer model is described and preliminary data are presented to illustrate some of the additional features of SEC with multiple detectors.