Numerical determination of competitive adsorption isotherm of mandelic acid enantiomers on cellulose-based chiral stationary phase.

The use of inverse method for the determination of competitive adsorption isotherm of mandelic acid enantiomers on cellulose tris(3,5-diethylphenyl carbamate) stationary phase is proposed in this work. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm with jumping genes (NSGA-II-JG) was applied to acquire the isotherm parameters by minimizing the sum of square deviations of the model predictions from the measured elution profiles. Three different competitive isotherm models, i.e., Langmuir, biLangmuir and Tóth, combined with transport-dispersive chromatographic model were used in predicting the elution profiles. Orthogonal collocation on finite element (OCFE) method was applied to obtain the calculated elution profiles. Results indicate that biLangmuir isotherm and Tóth isotherm give remarkably similar equilibrium isotherms within the investigated liquid concentration range. Band profiles calculated from both isotherm models are in good agreement with the experimental data. The validity of the determined parameters was verified by comparing the model predictions with experimental elution profiles at various experimental conditions.