Fast Analysis of Environmental Phenols with Agilent Poroshell 120 EC-C18 Columns

A method separating nine phenol compounds originally developed on a 4.6 × 100 mm, 5-μm column is transferred to an Agilent Poroshell 120 EC-C18 4.6 × 100 mm, 2.7 μm column. The gradient and flow rate are scaled, maintaining a constant retention index in order to determine the optimal flow rate for each column evaluated. Simple guidelines for transferring a method are provided. The new separation reduces the analysis time from 20 minutes to less than 3 minutes with a higher peak capacity, and should not require any changes to sample preparation since both columns use 2 μm frits. The method is further scaled to a 50 mm column that produces slightly less resolution than found with the 100 mm column, but with an analysis time of only 2 minutes with an equivalent peak capacity to the original method. While pressure is increased from the original method, it is still below 400 bar and can be easily transferred to any HPLC system.