There is strong renewed interest in ion-pair chromatography (IPC) because of its great importance for separating new-generation biosimilar pharmaceuticals such as oligonucleotides. Due to the complexity of the IPC process, its mathematical modeling is challenging, especially in preparative mode. In a recent study, Leśko et al. (2021) developed a mathematical model for predicting, with good accuracy, overloaded concentration profiles for sodium benzenesulfonate, describing how the overloaded solute concentration profiles change from Langmuirian to complicated U-shaped, and then back again to Langmuirian profiles, with increasing concentration of the ion-pair reagent in the mobile phase.

This study identifies and explains the underlying mechanism generating these complex peak shapes and band-shape transformations; this was only possible by visualizing and modeling the underlying equilibrium perturbations that occur upon injection in preparative IPC. In the 2021 study, the model was derived based on the concentration profiles obtained using a conventional UV detector principle, so the concentration gradients and perturbation zones of the mobile-phase components were not visualized. In this study, the necessary mechanistic information was obtained via complementary experiments combining two detection principles, i.e., refractive index detection and UV detection, with modeling efforts. The models correctly described the invisible equilibrium perturbations and how these formed internal gradients of the mobile-phase components. The models also explained the complex overloaded solute-band deformations reported in the recent study. In addition, a rule of thumb was developed for predicting experimental conditions that could result in deformed solute elution profiles and/or for avoiding these deformations. The latter is crucial for the practical chromatographer, since such U-shaped solute-band profiles are undesirable in preparative separation due to the broader elution zones, resulting in lower productivity than that of normal band shapes.