Finding the best separation in situations of extremely low chromatographic resolution

Samples with a large number of compounds or similarities in their structure and polarity may yield insufficient chromatographic resolution. In such cases, however, finding conditions where the largest number of compounds appears sufficiently resolved can be still worthwhile. A strategy is here reported that optimises the resolution level of chromatograms in cases where conventional global criteria, such as the worst resolved peak pair or the product of elementary resolutions, are not able to detect any separation, even when most peaks are baseline resolved. The strategy applies a function based on the number of "well resolved" peaks, which are those that exceed a given threshold of peak purity. It is, therefore, oriented to quantify the success in the separation, and not the failure, as the conventional criteria do. The conditions that resolve the same amount of peaks are discriminated by either quantifying the partial resolution of those peaks that exceed the established threshold, or by improving the separation of peaks below it. The proposed approach is illustrated by the reversed-phase liquid chromatographic separation of a mixture of 30 ionisable and neutral compounds, using the acetonitrile content and pH as factors.