Multicomponent equilibrium theory for ion‐exchange columns involving reactions

Abstract

Abstract The multicomponent equilibrium theory for ion‐exchange columns (chromatography) has been extended to systems accompanied by reactions in either or both phases. Based on the concept of coherence of concentration waves in the original theory, the proposed approach includes a systematic way to determine the thermodynamic variance and a general mathematical formulation to construct the composition path grid by means of numerical techniques. With proper adjustments, this approach can be applied as well to adsorption columns involving reactions. As a practical example, a comparison of predicted and observed effluent histories for an anion‐exchange system with dissociation‐association reactions is shown.