I've been busy for the past month fixing our 3-mcpd method. Basically our old method had SPE recovery problems, dilution factor calculation errors and chromatography issues pretty much the holy trinity of method fail.
I've fixed the recovery issues, the dilution calculation issues, and the peak shape issues. Our method is based of derivitization with HFBI. I have just started experiementing with phenyl boric acid and am waiting for a new internal standard. Our HFBI method uses 3-methoxy 1,2 propane diol at the ITSD. I can't resolve it from 3-mcpd using the PBA method so I am going to try propane 1,3 diol or ethylene glycol.
The last remaining issue I am having is we have never been able to achieve resolution between 3-mcpd-HFBIderivative and 2-mcpd-HFBIderivative. Like most other publications and the AOAC method we use a 30m .25mm .25um DB-5ms column and we've tried columns from 5 different manufacturers over the years with no difference. We get almost resolution on some samples and little resolution on others bases on the ratio of 2 to 3 mcpd present.
Is anyone here working on this analysis. It has been reported a Innowax column works but it is very vulnerable to attack by residual HFBI. Has anyone tried a higher phenyl or cyanopropyl column?