Adsorption model for retention in normal-phase liquid chromatography with ternary mobile phases.

The review gives a link between the theory of adsorption from multicomponent solutions and liquid chromatography. The article surveys the methods developed to describe the retention in normal-phase chromatography with ternary mobile phases with emphasis on the results of the authors. In the model used the driving force for the separation is the difference in adsorption of a solute and all solvents onto the solid surface. The general equation generates a series of simple linear relationships to predict the retention factor in ternary mobile phase for which certain parameters remain fixed. Theoretical concepts are tested by comparison with experimental data. The correlations between parameters characterizing retention in ternary, binary and pure solvents are discussed.