Design considerations for rapid-heating columns applied in fast capillary gas chromatography

Numerical calculation procedures are developed to predict the optimum experimental conditions for rapid-programming fast capillary gas chromatography (GC). Retention times and peak widths are calculated from experimentally determined thermodynamic compound properties. Errors in the predicted values are below 2 and 15% for the retention times and peak widths, respectively. It is shown that rapid temperature programming is a powerful tool for speeding up the separation of samples containing homologous series of compounds such as, e.g., triglycerides. The optimal programming rate and the minimum required column length to obtain the shortest possible analysis time with sufficient resolution (R_s=1.5) are predicted. Using a wide-bore column with a length of 10 m, a programming rate of 4°C/s and a carrier gas velocity of approximately 250 cm/s, the shortest possible analysis time for a triglycerides sample can be obtained while still maintaining sufficient resolution. With these instrumental settings the analysis time of a triglycerides separation can be reduced from 15 to approximately 5 minutes. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Micro Sep 13: 337–345, 2001