How much does band broadening adulterate results deduced from chromatograms measured by size-exclusion chromatography really?

A number of polystyrene samples and standards were measured with several column combinations which differed in their extent of band broadening, σBB. Comparison of the derived chain length distributions showed in some cases good agreement even despite strong distinctions in the determined σBB values. The calculated number and weight averages of the samples were almost identical in most cases for the column combinations used. Furthermore, the points of inflection of the standards and of multimodale distributions composed of narrow (Poisson like) peaks in microemulsion were examined. When conferred with the theoretical values which were calculated for assumed Poisson distributions the respective deviations from the “true” ones were as high as 10% (almost reaching 20% in unfavorable cases). Simple (correction) procedures were tested in order to obtain the actual average values as well as the effective points of inflection of narrow distributions.