A Modeling Approach for Orthogonality of Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Separations

A novel method is developed for orthogonality evaluation of comprehensive two-dimensional separations (C2DS). Utilization of efficiency measures such as peak capacity (n(c)) can be critically evaluated for C2DS analysis to describe an orthogonal separation of the analytes in a 2D plane. Unlike most previous methods focusing on bin coverage over 2D space, rather than taking into account the distribution based on accurate peak retention, in the proposed method, the separation orthogonality of C2DS is divided into two parts (i.e., C-pert and C-peaks). These correspond to peak coverage percent, and 2D distribution correlation of compounds, respectively. Bin occupation and a simple-linear regression model, on the basis of normalized retention times in 2D separation space ((1)t(R) and (2)t(R)), are further introduced to quantitatively define the two terms. Orthogonality ranges from 0 to 1 correspond to perfectly correlated and orthogonal separations, respectively, which are presented based on both C-pert and C-peaks considerations. The advantage of this method is the use of separation properties of C2DS to characterize practical 2D peak distribution and does not rely on assumptions or any imposed limitations. Simulation of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC X GC) was achieved by using the Abraham solvation parameter model, and applied to generate examples for orthogonality assessment. In this work, 225 compounds comprising a range of chemical classes were simulated for separation on two column set pairs comprising low polarity/polar and moderately polar/polar combinations. Results illustrate that the proposed method applied to GC X GC provides a reasonable assessment of 2D separation performance and may be used to derive optimal experimental conditions when used with an experimental design strategy.