Application of different RP-HPLC methods for the determination of the octanol/water partition coefficient of selected tetrachlorobenzyltoluenes Original Research Article

Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) in both, isocratic and gradient elution mode (stationary phase: LiChrospher 100 RP-18; mobile phase: water/methanol or water/acetonitrile) was used for a renewed determination of octanol/water partition coefficients (KOW) of selected tetrachlorobenzyltoluene (TCBT) isomers. Reported KOW values identify this substance class as very hydrophobic but the data are relatively inconsistent. Based on a series of calibration runs with hydrophobic reference substances of different chemical structure at various eluent compositions we tested different approaches for the evaluation of isocratic retention factors (logk) and found substantial differences between the direct calibration procedure at special methanol volume fractions in the mobile phase (0.95–0.80) and the use of retention factors extrapolated to pure water as eluent (logkW). The logKOW values obtained for the TCBTs with the latter approach are around 0.5 units higher and closer to literature data. The gradient elution experiments yield slightly better results compared to the isocratic direct calibration procedure, but not as good as the calibration with logkW. In addition, the use of the RP-HPLC retention factors for estimating sorption coefficients (KOC) of TCBT isomers is discussed.