Propagation of uncertainty in high-performance liquid chromatography with UV-VIS detection

Abstract The propagation of uncertainty in peak area or peak height in HPLC with UV–VIS detection, is derived in terms of injection volume, flow rate, injected concentration, retention volume and temperature. It is shown that the sample concentration at the detector has a significant uncertainty distribution, which adds to the uncertainty of the measurement of absorbency. For measurement of peak area and peak height, the uncertainty of the injection volume has the greatest effect. To this is added temperature for peak height, and flow rate and temperature for peak area. Analytical solutions are presented for all uncertainties and are compared with data from a numerical simulation using Latin Hypercube sampling.