HRGC SEPARATION PERFORMANCE EVALUATION BY A SIMPLIFIED FOURIER-ANALYSIS APPROACH

A simple procedure is presented for determining separation performance of HRGC analysis of multicomponent mixtures. The procedure is based o n the computation of Autocovariance Function (EACVF) from the digitize d experimental chromatogram Graphic inspection of the EACVF plot permi ts easy computation of the width value of the single component peak, s igma; from the EACVF value at t = 0 the number of component in the mix ture, m, can be simply derived, From these two basic quantities ail th e other chromatographic performance attributes can be calculated, The consistency of the procedure is tested for different chromatograms and compared with the more complex EACVF fitting method, Several features of the multicomponent chromatogram overloading effects included, are directly detected.