Electrodialytic Membrane Suppressors for Ion Chromatography Make Programmable Buffer Generators

The use of buffer solutions is immensely important in a great variety of disciplines. The generation of continuous pH gradients in flow systems plays an important role in the chromatographic separation of proteins, high-throughput pKa determinations, etc. We demonstrate here that electrodialytic membrane suppressors used in ion chromatography can be used to generate buffers. The generated pH, computed from first principles, agrees well with measured values. We demonstrate the generation of phosphate and citrate buffers using a cation-exchange membrane (CEM) -based anion suppressor and Tris and ethylenediamine buffers using an anion-exchange membrane (AEM) -based cation suppressor. Using a mixture of phosphate, citrate, and borate as the buffering ions and using a CEM suppressor, we demonstrate the generation of a highly reproducible (avg RSD 0.20%, n = 3), temporally linear (pH 3.0–11.9, r2 > 0.9996), electrically controlled pH gradient. With butylamine and a large concentration (0.5 M) of added NaCl, we demonstrate a similar linear pH gradient of large range with a near-constant ionic strength. We believe that this approach will be of value for the generation of eluents in the separation of proteins and other biomolecules and in online process titrations.