Characterisation and Evaluation of the Pye Liquid Chromatograph.

The principle of the Pye Liquid Chromatograph is that a wire passes through a solvent stream into which a solute has been introduced, through an evaporator which removes solvent, and then to a pyrolyser where the solute is degraded and maintained by passing the degradation products to a flame ionization detector. In the determination of the molecular weight distribution of polymers by gel permeation chromatography, this instrument may be used as a detector. However this application and the instruments potential in the related field of polymer pyrolysis has not been examined. The authors have shown that, under conditions which ensure complete pyrolysis of the polymer on the wire, the chromatograph responds quantitatively to the weight of polymer. It had also been shown that the sensitivity of the chromatograph varies inversely as the solvent flow rate and directly as the square of the wire speed. The chromatograph may also be used to obtain basic information about the degradation process, ie rate constants and activation energies. Author