Experimental investigation of the retention factor dependency of eddy dispersion in packed bed columns and relation to knox's empirical model parameters.

We report on a systematic and comprehensive (0.7 ≤ k'' ≤ 122) experimental study of the effect of the zone retention factor k'' on eddy dispersion (heddy) in packed bed columns for liquid chromatography. The values for heddy are obtained by subtracting rigorously estimated contributions to the total plate height from longitudinal diffusion (hB) and the mobile (hCm) and stationary zone (hCs) mass transfer resistances. For the first time, hCm-values are calculated using an expression for the Sherwood number (Sh) that has been established and validated in the relevant velocity range. Experiments were carried out on both a fully-porous and a core-shell particle column. In both cases, the eddy dispersion systematically decreased with increasing retention factor k'', dropping 0.5 to 0.8 reduced plate height units when going from the lowest to the highest k''. To establish a simple empirical fitting equation that can represent the observed effects, the widely used power law-based Knox model has been extended to express the dependence of its A- and n-parameters on the retention factor.