Question

Briefly explain why the alchohol 4-hydroxy-4-methyl-2-pentane has a longer gas chromotography retention time than the product alkenes.

Answer 1

Retention time depends on various factors such as:

temperature , stationary phase composition,mobile phase composition , flow rate of mobile phase(carrier gas), column length.

But here everything is same for both ,except the compound itself,it can be explained as:

If a component has a high boiling point, then it is likely to spend less time in the gas phase and more time in stationary phase or in column. Therefore its retention time will be higher than a compound with a lower boiling point. A compound’s boiling point can be related to its polarity.

Here the compound has a hydroxy(-OH) in it and will be polar in nature and hence it spends more time in stationary phase than non-polar alkenes