MULTICOMPONENT ANALYSIS - COMPARISON OF VARIOUS GRAPHICAL AND NUMERICAL-METHODS

The performance of several graphical (zero-crossing and derivative quo tient spectra with standardized divisor) and numerical methods (MULTIC and PLS) for the resolution of binary and ternary mixtures of species is compared. Numerical methods were found to be specially suited to m ulticomponent analysis, particularly for mixtures containing more than two analytes with highly overlapped spectra. The results obtained by using the compared methods to analyse various synthetic mixtures of ac etylsalicylic acid, caffeine and thiamine were quite consistent and er rors in the simultaneous quantification of the analytes amounted to le ss than 5% in all instances.