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Published on: February 13, 2016
Evaporative light scattering detector: toward a general molecular weight cutoff characterization of nanofiltration
Xianfeng Li1, Fred Monsuur, Bart Denoulet
1Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 23, Box 2461, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Abstract:
An evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) coupled with HPLC was used for the first time to characterize membranes. Polydispersed PEG-200, 600, and 1000 were selected as probe molecules to study the dependence of membrane retention on molecular weight via a gradient eluted HPLC separation coupled to ELSD detection. The results show that HPLC/ELSD is a really general and powerful technique to study the nanofiltration (NF) process since it does not require any special properties for the solutes (chromospheres or fluorophores) and possesses the required sensitivity. Especially in solvent resistant NF (SRNF), where a wide range of organic solvents is used, the ELSD detector was not affected by the interaction between solvent and solutes, which is a critical issue compared to other more common detectors.
