drugs of abuse substance analysis

[leechfreak]

Hello,

I would like to ask if anyone knows a good way to analyse drugs of abuse on a GC/FID . We have a Chrompack CP9002 machine with a

RTX-1701, 60m x 0.32mm x 0.25µm

and a

Crosslinked Methyl Silicone (12m x 0.2mm Methyl Silicone coated) column

Silylating the different drugs of abuse can be done with the BSTFA + 1% TMCS derivatisation reagent.

Now there is the problem in choosing a good solvent.

For the esters like cocaine and heroin I thought Ethyl acetate would do it, but in my experiment it has poor solubility.

For the amines like Cristal meth and MDMA I thought Triethylamine or Pyridine would work, but those react with the BSTFA, and that isnt desireble because of the loss of derivatisation reagent.

The samples are streetdrugs and have a unknown purity.

Is there anyone who could give me some tips on how to get this experiment to work.

Thanks in advance!

[Consumer Products Guy]

Our most common solvents for use with BSTFA are DMF and pyridine. Pyridine doesn't react with BSTFA, and is actually better than DMF because it acts as a proton acceptor. The drawback to pyridine is obviously its odor, but we still do use it. GCMS is a nice tool for drugs of abuse.