Trilinear evolving factor analysis for the resolution of three-way multi-component chromatograms

In the resolution of overlapping chromatographic peaks, reliable information about the concentration windows of all chemical components is crucial for the success of many multivariate resolution methods. In this paper, taking the advantage of trilinearity that is intrinsic in many three-way data arrays, the trilinear evolving factor analysis (TEFA) is derived to establish a trilinear rank map for three-way multi-component chromatograms. With the information of local rank obtained from the trilinear rank map, selective region of each component can be determined. This provides the possibility to resolve the profiles of a single component one by one. It is shown that combining the local eluting information and the coupled vector resolution, a fast and reliable non-iterative resolution of the trilinear data array can be obtained. Simulated and real experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed method possesses the properties of easy implementation and excellent performance for the resolution of three-way multi-component chromatograms.