Retention behavior of phenols, anilines, and alkylbenzenes in liquid chromatographic separations using subcritical water as the mobile phase.

The unique characteristic of subcritical water is its widely tunable physical properties. For example, the polarity (measured by dielectric constant) of water is significantly decreased by raising water temperature. At temperatures of 200-250 °C (under moderate pressure to keep water in the liquid state), the polarity of pure water is similar to that of pure methanol or acetonitrile at ambient conditions. Therefore, pure subcritical water may be able to serve as the mobile phase for reversed-phase separations. To investigate the retention behavior in subcritical water separation, the retention factors of BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and m-xylene), phenol, aniline, and their derivatives have been determined using subcritical water, methanol/water, and acetonitrile/water systems. Subcritical water separations were also performed using alumina, silica-bonded C18, and poly(styrene-divinylbenzene) columns to study the influence of the stationary phase on analyte retention under subcritical water conditions.