On the performance of liquid chromatography for the separation of glucose and fructose

Abstract

For the better separation of glucose and fructose the performance of liquid-liquid chromatography was studied. The system employed the ion-exchange resin as the solid support of the stationary phase and water as the eluant. First, several ionic forms of the resin were tested. The partitioning effects were greatly inflenced by the ionic forms especially for anion exchangers. The alkaline earth metals, $Ca^{++}$ and $Sr^{++}$, and $Co_3^{--}$ showed preferable results, and the resin in $Co_3^{--}$ form was utilized thereafter in the entire works. Since no interactions between the partitionings of glucose and fructose were found, the kinetic parameters governing the chromatographic operation were determined separately for each sugar. The model adopted here involved the axial dispersion, the mass transfer between the mobile and stationary phase, and the diffusion in the stationary phase. The conditions that these preocesses will play a favorable role to the separation were examined. Dependence of the partitioning effects were investigated on some factors such as degree of crosslinkage of the resin, column diameter, operating temperature, and sample size. Generally the same phenomena as have been reported earlier was observed, but the variations of glucose caught the attentions in contrast with those of fructose.