I have resorted to several types of HPLC during my research.
The main goals of my research project have been the elimination of pharmaceutical compounds from water and the monitoring of their concentration as well as the concentration of their degradation intermediates. The arisen degradation intermediates of the pharmaceuticals I treated can be of diverse nature: aromatic compounds of variable polarity, short-chain alyphatic acids, and several ions.
In order to be able to detect and quantify such different types of analytes I must be prepared with different types of detectors (photodiode array for aromatic species, conductivity for ionic species...) and columns (reverse phase columns of different polarity for different aromatic compounds, ion-exclusion columns for the detection of short-chain alyphatic acids, and different types of ion-exchange columns to separate ions).
Left picture: This is the chromatograph I have used in most of my analysis during the oxidative treatment of aqueous solutions of pharmaceuticals. Capable of performing reverse phase, ion-exclusion and ion-exchange chromatography.
Right picture: An example of a displayed chromatogram for a sample containing treated ibuprofen. The highest peak, at 3.5 minutes of retention time, corresponds to ibuprofen. The other peaks are degradation products of ibuprofen, the most significant of them being 4-isobutylacetophenone, with a peak at a retention time of 4.78 minutes.
The HPLC modalities I have used most are:
- Ion Exclusion HPLC
