Liquid chromatography at elevated temperatures with pure water as the mobile phase

High-temperature liquid chromatography (termed pressurized hot water liquid chromatography, PHW-LC) is a form of high-performance LC (HPLC) that uses pure water as the eluent. It is distinguished from conventional HPLC in that solvent strength is increased by temperature rather than by organic solvents. The absence of organic solvents makes PHW-LC an environmentally benign technique, and high-temperature elution improves separation selectivity, efficiency and speed. Detector selection is also widened. We examine current instrumentation (including columns and detectors), chromatographic performance and various applications. Developments in this field have occurred mainly in column technology (hot water durable phases) and in detection (flame ionization detector and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy).