Resolution of multicomponent profiles with partial selectivity. A comparison of direct methods

Three procedures for resolution of multicomponent systems were tested for their ability to deal with partial selectivity. The methods were evolving factor analysis (EFA), heuristic evolving latent projections (HELP) and the method of orthogonal projections. An extensive data simulation, in which five factors were varied according to a full 25 factorial design, was carried out to test the methods. The simulations showed HELP to be the most powerful method for resolution. The importance of the design variables was qualitatively studied by means of PLS models. Several parameters, among them the net analytical signal, were found to be unable to alone say anything conclusively about HELPʹs chances for successfully resolving the systems.