Hold-up time in gas chromatography: V. Dependence of the retention of n-alkanes on the chromatographic variables in isothermal gas chromatography

The chromatographic behaviour of n-alkanes and other homologous series in isothermal gas chromatography has been shown to depart from the “linear” representation of the logarithms of the adjusted retention times vs. carbon number. One of the expressions proposed to describe this behaviour is tR(z)=A+exp (B+CzD). In this paper, a regression analysis shows that three of the parameters of the equation depend on different chromatographic variables such as hold-up time, average linear gas velocity, volume and polarity of the stationary phase and temperature of the column. The fourth parameter (D), responsible for the departure from the “linearity”, does not depend on any chromatographic variable, and represents a gradual decrease of the contribution of the methylene groups to the general properties of n-alkanes, with no relation to the chromatographic phenomenon.