The 16th International Symposium on Hyphenated Techniques in Chromatography and Separation Technology (HTC-16) will be taking place in Ghent from the 29th to the 31st of January, 2020. The conference is being organised by the Royal Flemish Chemical Society (KVCV) and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Separation Science Group (SSG). The conference is organised every other year, and focuses on state-of-the-art developments in separation technologies and hyphenated techniques. In three parallel sessions over a total of three days, leading researchers from academia and industry will be presenting plenary lectures, keynote lectures, tutorials, oral and poster-flash presentations, on fundamental and practical aspects of LC and GC, including UHPLC-MS, 2D-LC, GC(×GC)-MS, and SFC.

Three short courses are also planned for Tuesday the 28th of January, the day preceding the start of the main conference. One of these short courses, entitled ‘Fundamentals of Chromatographic Separations‘ will be led by members of the RSC SSG, and will demystify commonly encountered chromatographic terms and descriptors, not only explaining them theoretically but describing their practical effects. Topics covered will include:

• The impact of temperature on retention factors, efficiency and selectivity
• The role of the stationary phase: why would you choose one phase over another?
• What role do column dimensions play – including length, internal diameter and film thickness if applicable?
• Why are there so many C18’s and 5%diphenyl/95%dimethyl polysiloxane phases, and how do they differ?
• Why do smaller (sub-2µm) fully porous and/or superficially porous (coreshell) particles provide significant benefits in LC efficiency?
• What impact does changing the carrier gas have on GC efficiency?
• How does changing the LC solvent alter retention factor and selectivity?

Further details and registration information can be found at the conference website, here. You can register for HTC-16 all the way till the 19th of January, but there are only a limited number of places on the short course, so register today!