One can estimate a reasonable plate number for any column as:
N ≈ 300 L/dp
L is the column length (in millimeters) and dp is the particle diameter (in micrometers).
For example for 250mm x 4.6mm column packed with 5 micron particles, the predicted value is:
N ≈ 15,000
If the measured value of N is about 20% of this predicted value, the column is in good condition.
