Derringer’s desirability function combined with face-centered cube central composite design was used to map the chromatographic response surface for simultaneous optimization of resolution and analysis time of four phenolic acids (vanilic, cafeic, para-coumaric and ferulic) in micellar liquid chromatography. The factors studied were the concentration of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), volume percentage of propanol (PrOH), and acetic acid (AcOH) in mobile phase. The chromatographic response functions (CRFs) were formed using two sigmoidal desirability functions. The quality of the obtained chromatograms in each experiment was calculated using CRF, and the model was built by the use of multiple linear regression (MLR) to correlate the obtained CRFs with the experimental factors and their interactions. The developed MLR model showed good descriptive and predictive ability (R 2 = 0.9569 and F= 24.45). The optimum mobile phase composition was found to be [SDS] = 20 mM, 1.0% (v/v) PrOH and 2.0% (v/v) AcOH, which provided good resolution and analysis time for the separation of targetphenolic acids. The efficiency of prediction of polynomial model was confirmed by performing the experiment under the predicted optimal conditions.
