Method development is a pain point in most laboratories, with iterative approaches often being limited by instrument availability, costly use of standards and solvents, and time constraints. During development, there are also an extensive set of variables that impact results both for LC and GC: instrument flows; multistep elution programs (solvent gradient or temperature depending on instrument); column dimensions; and the stationary phase, to name but a few.
In this work, Restek presents virtual chromatography solutions to assist with new method creation within both GC and LC workflows. These software solutions allow instrument-free modelling of chromatograms based on real test data acquired from its libraries of compounds, providing end users with a list of compounds with known retention information, enabling custom method development tailored to the needs of the user. Output comes in the form of a modelled chromatogram providing calculated retention time data for each compound requested, and allowing criteria, such as target resolution, to be set and optimised.
The accuracy of transfer for a method developed using the modeller software to instrument analysis was then tested. For EZGC, we used a panel of 95 volatile organic compounds across a range of polarities, and method transfer demonstrated an average RT difference of ±8.9 seconds with 99% of compounds meeting transfer criteria. For the EZLC suite, a panel of 67 drugs of abuse compounds were developed and transferred with an average RT difference between data sets of ±6.3 seconds and all compounds successfully meeting the transfer criteria.
