Abstract: A preparative scale liquid chromatographic column with the conical shape of 10° opening angle was constructed and evaluated. The column was designed with the inlet/outlet diameters of 54/27 mm, the column length of 150 mm and the column volume of 200 mL, and packed with the spherical C18 bonded silica with the particle size of 40~75 μm and the aperture of 11 nm. The mobile phase in the conical column showed a plug like flow profile and plug like chromatographic band shape. For naphthalene, the reduced plate height was about 2.11; the maximum sample load was 2.1 mg or 1.7 mL (10% reduction of plate number), which is 20%, 16% and 19% higher than that of cylindrical one of the same length and volume. As the injection mass increased from 2.4 mg up to 12 mg, the resolution of ethyl paraben/butyl (Rs2) reduced from 2.14 down to 1.71, and the butyl paraben/naphthalene (Rs3) from 2.91 down to 2.52; the injection volume increased from 3 mL up to 19 mL, Rs2 reduced from 2.23 down to 1.28, and Rs3 from 2.95 down to 2.30, while the peaks were still in symmetric shape without tailing. This characteristic of the column shall benefit for the separation of trace components from matrix. This demonstrated the conical shaped preparative columns would have a broad practical applicability for obtaining pure compounds.

Key words: conical chromatographic column, scale-up , preparative liquid chromatography