High-performance liquid chromatography HPLC , limitations

In the first chapter, I have discussed the limitations of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry when used in isolation and how the combination of the two allows these to be overcome. In this chapter, the effect of combining the two techniques with regard to the individual performance characteristics are explored. 

In modern times, most analyses are performed on an analytical instrument for, e.g., gas chromatography (GC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultra-violet/visible (UV) or infrared (IR) spectrophotometry, atomic absorption spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), mass spectrometry. Each of these instruments has a limitation on the amount of an analyte that they can detect. This limitation can be expressed as the IDL, which may be defined as the smallest amount of an analyte that can be reliably detected or differentiated from the background on an instrument. 

In addition to GC/MS, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC/MS) has been used to analyse natural resins in ancient samples, particularly for paint varnishes containing mastic and dammar resins [34]. A partial limitation of chromatographic techniques is that they do not permit the analysis of the polymeric fraction or insoluble fraction that may be present in the native resins or formed in the course of ageing. Techniques based on the direct introduction of the sample in the mass spectrometer such as direct temperature resolved mass spectrometry (DTMS), direct exposure mass spectrometry (DE-MS) and direct inlet mass spectrometry (DI-MS), and on analytical pyrolysis (Py-GC/MS), have been employed as complementary techniques to obtain preliminary information on the... 

In the last decade, capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become one of the most powerful and conceptually simple separation techniques for the analysis of complex mixtures. The main reasons are its high resolution, relatively short analysis times, and low operational cost when compared to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The ability to analyze ultrasmall volume samples in the picoliter-to-nanoliter ranges makes it an ideal analytical method for extremely volume-limited biological microenvironments. 

In this regard several sophisticated chromatographic methods, with a quantification limit down to about 0.2 ng/g, have been developed and published for the determination of zearalenone. The methods were mainly based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection (Krska 1998 Visconti and Pascale 1998 Schuhmacher et al. 1998 Tanaka et al. 2000), but HPLC with mass spectrometry detection was also used (Shirai et al. 2000 Josephs et al. 2001). 

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) techniques are widely used for separation of phenolic compounds. Both reverse- and normal-phase HPLC methods have been used to separate and quantify PAs but have enjoyed only limited success. In reverse-phase HPLC, PAs smaller than trimers are well separated, while higher oligomers and polymers are co-eluted as a broad unresolved peak [8,13,37]. For our reverse-phase analyses, HPLC separation was achieved using a reverse phase. Cl8, 5 (Jtm 4.6 X 250 mm column (J. T. Baker, http //www.mallbaker.com/). Samples were eluted with a water/acetonitrile gradient, 95 5 to 30 70 in 65 min, at a flow rate of 0.8 mL/min. The water was adjusted with acetic acid to a final concentration of 0.1%. All mass spectra were acquired using a Bruker Esquire LC-MS equipped with an electrospray ionization source in the positive mode. 

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