Page 6 - Illustrated Pocket Dictionary of Chromatography

PREFACE

Instrument-based chromatography is now, for all practical purposes,
a mature and well-established field. The days of the necessity for
intensive training on the theories underpinning the technology simply
to provide competent use have long since passed. Now the require-
ment is for the analyst to be competent and proficient in the use of
the technology, to produce reliable and defensible results on a routine
basis with little or no formal guidance. I have found that this is case
in my laboratory, and I believe the basic scenario is the same in lab-
oratories throughout the world.
I have attempted to address these needs in two other texts—
through method review and summary in The HPLC Solvent Guide,
2nd edition, and through description of the use and maintenance of
LCs in Troubleshooting HPLC Systems: A Bench Manual.
This text aims at a slightly different need that lies beyond the basic
use of chromatographic instrumentation. The commonplace use of
chromatographic techniques in analyzing regulated products places
an additional burden on the analyst: the proficient use of the basic
data-handling terms is also expected. Therefore, the definitions of
some fundamental statistical terms and concepts are included.
It should be noted that there are many excellent formal training
courses that can assist with these issues, but often, because of the
broad nature of the field, they can only cover topics in a limited
fashion that may or may not meet the exact needs of the trainee.
Outstanding texts also exist that deal with deriving and defining the
concepts and equations governing separations, but many analysts
to do want to read through pages of theory of derivation to get to the
desired equation, only to find that a real-life example is not included.
This text is intended as a companion for those who have limited
experience in chromatography but now are required to work in that
field. It provides a basis from which the analyst can readily apply a
concept without fully understanding the derivation from the math or
the fundamental concepts.
The thrust of this text is to provide succinct entries, both defini-
tions and graphic/pictorial aids, from which the analyst can get im-
mediately useful results. Analysts who require the theory behind or
the details surrounding a concept are referred to the large set of
excellent reference texts listed at the end of the entries.
A list of commonly used acronyms is also presented; they seem to
proliferate more rapidly than rabbits, and so, once again, those ana-
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