On Apr 29, 2021 the webinar “Mobile Phase pH in Liquid Chromatography” was organised in the framework of the project 17FUN09 “UnipHied” (www.uniphied.eu). Altogether 101 people participated from 41 countries, ranging from Portugal to Philippines and from Peru to Nepal.
It is well known that in liquid chromatography, mobile phase pH is an important parameter, significantly affecting the retention of acidic and basic analytes. Yet, mobile phase pH is tricky to measure because mobile phases are usually aqueous-organic mixtures and in the case of gradient elution mobile phase composition gradually changes during elution. The topics covered during the webinar were:
— Different possibilities to express pH in liquid chromatography (LC)
— Unified pH (pHabs): the concept and measurements methods
— The applications and limitations of different pH expressions in LC
Numerous questions were asked by the participants that indicated the importance of the topic and the need for a more robust conceptual framework for handling the topic of pH in liquid chromatography. Contributing to this, via the pHabs concept, is one of the aims of the UnipHied project.
The UnipHied project is funded from the EU’s EMPIR programme, co-financed by the Participating States and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Additional support from: EU Regional Development Fund (TK141 “Advanced materials and high-technology devices for energy recuperation systems”), Estonian Research council (PRG690) and Estonian Center of Analytical Chemistry (www.akki.ee)