A rapid HPLC determination of C-2-C-7 aliphatic diamines by precolumn derivatization with acetylacetone in methanol-water

Abstract

A rapid reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic analysis for the determination of seven aliphatic diamines in water is described. Precolumn derivatization with acetylacetone is used for traces of aliphatic diamines in water-methanol (10:1 v/v) medium, The acetylacetone derivatives obtained after 15 min were extracted with an octadecylsilane functionalized silica cartridge, and then injected into the HPLC system, The HPLC system consisted of a reversed-phase column, and a spectrophotometric detector adjusted to 310nm as elution solvent a methanol-tetrahydrofuran-water (55:3:42 v/V) mixture was used. The acetylacetone derivatives of the C-2-C-7 diamines were separated with a good resolution in 23 min. The detection limits achieved for each diamine were between 0.18-0.72 ng/ml for a 100 ml water sample. The recovery of diamine derivatives from river and seawater was 88-101%, with relative standard deviations of 2.2-4.0%, and 82-93%, with relative standard deviations of 2.8-4.6%, respectively, Aliphatic diamines are widely used as chemical reagents, occur as metabolic in biomedical studies and are used as chelating agents in analytical chemistry. As they are soluble in water, their use results in their ultimate release to the environment. The need for a sensitive, selective and rapid determination of aliphatic diamines in environmental samples thus has become important. Dobberpuhl et al. [1] have described a highly sensitive pulsed electrochemical detection for aliphatic monoamines and diamines following their chromatographic separation. Although, it is a sensitive method the determination has to be carried out in alkaline conditions. The most common method for the determination of aliphatic amines is high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), using different derivatives with either fluorescence [2-5] or UV-visible detection [6-11]. The fluorescence detection method most often relies on post-column derivatization, which requires a second pump to deliver the reagent. Acetylacetone is soluble to some degree in water, and has been used as a pre-column derivatization reagent [12]. The reaction only is effective with diamines, and results in UV-active acetylacetone derivatives known as Schiff bases. But acetylacetone requires a long reaction time in water, which makes it rather unsuitable for routine analysis. In this paper an optimized reversed-phase HPLC determination procedure for C2-C7 aliphatic diamines at low ng/ml levels in water is described.