AN ALTERNATING TRILINEAR DECOMPOSITION ALGORITHM WITH APPLICATION TO CALIBRATION OF HPLC-DAD FOR SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINATION OF OVERLAPPED CHLORINATED AROMATIC-HYDROCARBONS

In this paper an alternating trilinear decomposition (ATLD) algorithm that is an improvement of the traditional PARAFAC algorithm without an y constraints is described as an alternative algorithm for decompositi on of three-way data arrays. It is based on an alternating least squar es principle and an improved iterative procedure that, in a real trili near sense, uses the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse with singular v alue decomposition, Its performance is compared with that of the tradi tional PARAFAC algorithm by a series of Monte Carlo simulations with d ifferent noise levels. It was found that the ATLD algorithm has a capa bility to converge faster than the traditional PARAFAC algorithm. The ATLD-based second-order calibration retains the second-order advantage that calibration in the presence of unknown interferents can be perfo rmed to provide satisfactory concentration estimates. Both algorithms have been used for simultaneous determination of overlapped chlorinate d aromatic hydrocarbons measured by means of a high-performance liquid chromatograph with a diode array detector. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons , Ltd.