High-Performance Liquid Chromatography in the Undergraduate Chemical Engineering Laboratory

Abstract

This article describes the assembly of a simple, low-cost, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system and its use in the undergraduate chemical engineering laboratory course to perform simple experiments. By interpreting the results from these experiments students are able to gain significant experience in the general method of chromatography, which is widely used for large-scale separations in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Students are also able to gain experience in the specific technique of HPLC, which is commonly used as a liquid-phase analytical technique in the chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering fields.