Particle Based Modeling of Electrical Field Flow Fractionation Systems

Electrical Field Flow Fractionation (ElFFF) is a sub method in the field flow fractionation (FFF) family that relies on an applied voltage on the channel walls to effect a separation. ElFFF has fallen behind some of the other FFF methods because of the optimization complexity of its experimental parameters. To enable better optimization, a particle based model of the ElFFF systems has been developed and is presented in this work that allows the optimization of the main separation parameters, such as electric field magnitude, frequency, duty cycle, offset, flow rate and channel dimensions. The developed code allows visualization of individual particles inside the separation channel, generation of realistic fractograms, and observation of the effects of the various parameters on the behavior of the particle cloud. ElFFF fractograms have been generated via simulations and compared with experiments for both normal and cyclical ElFFF. The particle visualizations have been used to verify that high duty cycle voltages are essential to achieve long retention times and high resolution separations. Furthermore, by simulating the particle motions at the channel outlet, it has been demonstrated that the top channel wall should be selected as the accumulation wall for cyclical ElFFF to reduce band broadening and achieve high efficiency separations. While the generated particle based model is a powerful OPEN ACCESS Chromatography 2015, 2 595 tool to estimate the outcomes of the ElFFF experiments and visualize particle motions, it can also be used to design systems with new geometries which may lead to the design of higher efficiency ElFFF systems. Furthermore, this model can be extended to other FFF techniques by replacing the electrical field component of the model with the fields used in the other FFF techniques.