Calculation of Abraham descriptors from experimental data from seven HPLC systems; evaluation of five different methods of calculation

Solvation equations have been obtained for seven high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) systems, generated in the reverse phase (RP) mode with fast gradient elution. A training set of 40 compounds was used for each system. The seven equations were then used to calculate Abraham descriptors for a completely separate 40-compound test set. In this way the three descriptors dipolarity/polarizability S, hydrogen bond acidity A, and hydrogen bond basicity B were obtained. Five different procedures were used to calculate the descriptors, (i) Microsoft ‘Solver’, (ii) a program that uses a set of three simultaneous equations, and which we denote as ‘TripleX’, (iii) a program similar to Solver that we denote as ‘Descfit’, (iv) a series of regression equations developed from compounds with known descriptors and (v) a series of modified regression equations. We show that RP-HPLC data for a given compound in seven systems can be used to calculate the three Abraham descriptors reliably. We compare descriptors, and errors in the method, with those obtained from water–solvent partition systems.