High-speed liquid chromatography of polychlorinated biphenyls and related compounds

High-speed liquid chromatography in the system silica gel-dry n-hexane has been used to characterize the behaviour of a series of commercially available mixtures of chlorinated biphenyls, viz., Aroclor 1221-1268. An attempt has been made to assign a large number of peaks in the chromatograms of the Aroclors to the individual constituents. To this end, retention times and UV spectra were recorded for 47 polychlorinated biphenyls. The dependence of retention and spectral characteristics on the chlorine content of the substituted biphenyls is discussed