A simple frontal analysis equation to determine the adsorption parameters of solute molecules on different adsorbents

A simple frontal analysis equation to determine the adsorption parameters of solute molecules on different adsorbents was presented. It gives the relationship between the average breakthrough time and the feed solute concentration, and by using its linear form, two important parameters, the thermodynamic equilibrium constant K-SL for solute adsorption on the surface of adsorbent and the number n(t) of total adsorption sites distributed on the surface of adsorbent, can be simultaneously determined. The frontal analyses for some aromatic hydrocarbons on RP-C-18 reversed-phase medium, and some protein molecules on RP-C-18 reversed-phase, WCX-1 cation-exchange, PEG-400 hydrophobic and Chelating Sepharose Fast-flow separately chelated with Zn2+ or Cu2+ media, were separately carried out to test this equation and their adsorption parameters KSL and nt were separately obtained. The results show that all these frontal analysis data can be well described by this frontal analysis equation. For all of these frontal analysis systems, their parameters nt can separately approximately keep constant and they are independent of solute molecules used, while their parameters KSL are dependent upon both of the media packed in frontal analysis colurrm and the solute molecules used.