Pure water as a mobile phase in liquid chromatography techniques

Liquid chromatography is a technique that is gaining increasing interest and application, for example in the pharmaceutical industry. At the same time as the increase in the number of analyses performed, the amount of organic waste produced while working with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) apparatus is growing. Therefore, new methods and materials are being searched for to achieve the so-called green chromatography. In the following review we describe one of them, specifically the replacement of harmful organic solvents such as acetonitrile, methanol or isopropanol, with pure water used as the sole component of the mobile phase. In order to achieve a single component mobile phase, different methods or materials are used: the use of elevated temperature, the selection of new stationary phases, the utilization of changes in the properties of the stationary phase while using a highly polar eluent. (C) 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.