Tony Taylor | Authors

I’m very much a “big picture” type of thinker. By that, I mean unless I can understand all of the working parts of a problem and understand how they interact, I find it difficult to decide the best approach to figuring out how to solve the issue.

In this installment of the LCGC Blog, Tony Taylor discusses the instrument factors that need to be considered when optimising your UHPLC system to match the column hardware and analytical requirements for your applications, and why this is important in the pursuit of efficiency, speed, and increased resolution.

Electronic pneumatic controllers (EPC) were introduced into gas chromatography (GC) systems from the mid-1990s onwards and do an excellent job of regulating gas flow and pressure for GC inlets, columns, and detectors. Regular readers will know that, while I support innovation and improvements in engineering capability, I am inherently sceptical of anything with the “black box” tag and believe that unless we inherently understand how something works, we can neither fully harness the potential benefits, nor properly troubleshoot when something goes wrong. Therefore, read on as we open the lid and take a good look inside these particular black boxes.

The more polar analyte will favour aqueous solvents, and the less polar will be more highly soluble in organic solvent—so which do we choose?