Recommendations for easy acylation

[bmarquis]

Hi everyone,

I'm teaching an analytical course for undergraduates and I'd like to include an experiment that uses acylation for a GC-ECD analysis. The analytes themselves don't matter too much, I'm planning on using whatever analyte/derrivitzation technique that will give me the easiest procedure for the students to use. Does anyone have any recommendations? I imagine that phenols, or carboxylic acids will be the easiest analytes to derivatize.

Thanks in advance!

[Consumer Products Guy]

Can it be GC-FID? If so, making fatty acid methyl esters of sodium soaps from a bar of plain old soap is good, and practical.

[bmarquis]

Thanks for the idea- I wish it was FID, but unfortunately, I'm stuck with ECD.

[Don_Hilton]

You could to a perhalo acid anhydride with compunds with an active hydrogen - I expect phenolic compund would work farily well. And for a tie to something socaially and environmentally relevant, there are biomarkers for exposure to PAH exposure - the hydroxylated PAH's. These are isolated from urine, and analyzed by GC/MS. The work I am aware of uses TMS ethers, but for the sake of the desired lab -- trichloroacetyl deriviatives might work nicely.

[AICMM]

bmarquis,

"Determination of cyanides and thiocyanates in Water by Gas Chromatography" Journal of Chrom A, V84, #1, 1973, p 37-41."

Not acylation but similar. Add bromine water to water to convert CN ion to CNBr and measure by ECD. Cyanides in water are an environmental issue, yes? Have not done it but got to look at the paper for a bit and it looked pretty straight forward for a decent group of students.


Best regards,

AICMM