High-performance liquid chromatography carbohydrates applications

Many simple carbohydrates and other polyhydroxy compounds can be oxidized at a silver oxide surface. The oxidation is via an electrocatalytic mechanism involving a Ag(I) oxide. This forms the basis of a flow stream detector operated in an amperometric mode which may be used for either flow injection or high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) applications. The title electrode has been applied to the detection of simple carbohydrates, triglycerides and nucleic acid components. 

Despite the advances made in high-performance liquid chromatography in recent years, there are still occasionally applications in which conventional column chromatography is employed. These methods lack the sensitivity, resolution and automation of HPLC. They include the determination of urea herbicides in soil, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, carbohydrates, chloroaliphatic compounds and humic and fulvic acids in non-saline sediments. The technique has also been applied in sludge analysis, e.g. aliphatic hydrocarbons and carboxylic acids. 

A third area of development in carbohydrate l.c. analyses is in the combined techniques (see Section IV,3) and other methods that provide qualitative, as well as quantitative, information about sample constituents, such as high-performance liquid affinity chromatography. The use of specific lectin- and monoclonal antibody-based, stationary phases for analytical and preparative applications is now being considered. The basic concepts of these techniques have been reviewed - and their applications to carbohydrates have been discussed. 

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