Mark Tracy

Carbonyl compounds, including low molecular weight aldehydes and ketones, have environmental and health concerns; for example, short-term exposure to aldehydes can irritate the eyes, skin, and upper respiratory tract. Motor vehicles emit reactive hydrocarbons that undergo photochemical oxidation in the atmosphere, which generates formaldehyde and other carbonyls. In addition, formaldehyde contributes to the formation of photochemical ozone. California Air Resources Board (CARB) Method 1004 (1) provides an analytical method for the automotive industry to monitor 13 carbonyl compounds in engine exhaust. US EPA Method TO-11A (2) and Method 8315 (3) monitor atmospheric formaldehyde and 14 other carbonyl compounds and are used for a variety of environmental and occupational health purposes. In these methods, carbonyl compounds are trapped as the dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) derivatives before analysis by HPLC.

The recent development of ultra-HPLC (UHPLC) has provided a great potential for high throughput analysis achieved using small (sub-2 μm) particle size columns at increased linear velocities. The advantage of UHPLC over conventional HPLC is increased throughput without sacrificing resolution. Despite their popularity, sub-2 μm particle columns impose practical difficulties, such as high backpressure (which often requires a UHPLC system) and susceptibility to column fouling. Thus difficulty can be overcome using 2.0 to 2.5 μm particles. This study describes an example (analysis of vanilla extract) of transferring a conventional LC method to a high-throughput method using newly developed Acclaim® RSLC 2-μm columns that are based on spherical, porous, high-purity silica particles (dp = 2 μm, pore size = 120 Å, surface area = 320 m2/g).