Comparisons Of Predicting Retention Times In TPGC By Fourteen Retention Equations Established With Three Pairs Of Isothermal Retention Data

Based on the enlightenment from the crystallization behavior of polymer, thecrystallinity retention equation constructed with only three pairs of isothermalretention data was applied to predict retention times in temperature programmed gaschromatography （TPGC）. This equation worked beautifully in the single-ramptemperature-programmed modes, yielding the average absolute relative errors of0.65%for single-ramp TPGC across all the18analytes in3temperature programmedexperiments tested in this work.Moreover, to compare with the new retention equation systematically andthoroughly, another thirteen retention equations determined by two or threeparameters were derived from a universal formulalnk’=a₀+a₁/T+a₂/T²+a₃lnT+a₄T+a₅T²as a combination of the relationships betweenlnk’ and T with reference to five widely used retention equations in publications.Calculated by these fourteen retention equations with the same experimental data, theabsolute relative errors of prediction retention times for single-ramp TPGC modewere compared by means of statistical analysis. At a very high significance level of1%, statistical evidences of paired t-Test strictly implied that the new retentionequation yielded the best prediction results among all of the fourteen retentionequations. In addition, remarkably, among the thirteen retention equations, threeseldom used in publications retention equations also worked nicely, yieldingsatisfactory average absolute relative errors of0.78%,0.81%and0.84%forsingle-ramp TPGC.