Chromatography Forum

Guys please suggest to us something, don't leave us alone In our Lab we have no GC or HPLC at all. Now, we must take some master students to be a graduate from our school ( please don't cry I can feel that ). Now, imagine a new student registered from Master coming to your analytical lab, what research you can give him? In other word if we don't have GC OR HPLC does that mean the end of the world ? how can i train this master student to do a research!! in which area ? Do you think Titration will do any good? what else?

Instead of worrying about what you do not have, think about what you do have.

Peter

I think our school is committing a scientific crime by taking Master !!

Peter I love you wisdom, but my question to all of you: now if I want to study the adsorption, or degradation of some organic compounds in say : waste water or any environmental samples what wet chemistry methods can be used

Given that you are asking for basic advice on what you should teach your students I have difficulty disagreeing with your opening statement.

Try looking in some old text books from before 1950 - then there were none of instrumental chromatographic techniques that we now take for granted.

Peter

Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) has been used for decades for analysis organic compounds and does not require fancy instruments. You can use this technique to learn about normal and reversed-phase chromatograpy and use it for analysis as well. With something as simple as a peristaltic pump and a UV-VIS spectrophotometer, you can do column chromatography including size-exclusion, ion exchange, and normal and reverse-phase.

Peter I did teach this but i really don't believe to be applied nowadays where sample mitrices and interference is the issue. I will quit and find another job as I really can not make a Msc master in 2015 by TLC!!!. I have enough experience in old methods but I really don't feel it is acceptable nowadays thats why I just want to read some idea and impression.


Thanks skuned thats a great advice.

Honestly, the lack of budget put pressure on us and bosses ( It looks like i am begging ).

As always, these things should start with a good literature search to find out what has been done and how it can be improved. Please start there.

Do you have access to a visible spectrophotometer? If yes, here you go. This came to me this morning in an e-mail newsletter. In my opinion, they did not do a very good job of proving their point - particularly in regard to a process that might actually work in practice. You can determine formaldehyde fairly selectively with the Hantzsch chemistry (you can look it up if you're not familiar with it) and a visible spectrophotometer.

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ami ... cholaralrt

You may have to copy and paste the link into your web browser. It looks to me like all they did was put hair in a flask and stir it. Water treatment facilities do not operate in "batch mode". They are continuous operations (water flowing constantly). So, if it was going to work at all, you should determine break through of the analytes you're trying to adsorb on the hair. COD is not a very good way to determine formaldehyde in any system. They also didn't appear to analyze any real waste-water samples. Nobody cares if you can determine formaldehyde in water.

Good luck. I fear that without access to some reasonable instrumentation, it's going to be difficult for you to keep a Master's program in chemical analysis going at your institution.

Do you have any companies/laboratories that would be willing to donate "older" HPLC or GC instrumentation?

Most of the companies I've worked for always donated to universities older HPLCs, GCs and any instruments no longer needed.

Have you considered developing a research experiment to obtain grant funding?

rb6banjo, thanks indeed for your valuable suggestion and advice.

LC_labrat, thanks I have thought about the first suggestion but unfortunately at the moment no one is donating. Hopefully in future.

Do you think in your second suggestion if I develop a research ( say proposal ) and send it to some big company like ( water, agilent etc etc ) they will fund me? but i am situated now in Africa how they can fund me ?!

I would be grateful if you could elaborate more in your second suggestion i feel we don't know how to reach this method.

Sounds like you really get to develop what this new Masters program is for the long haul!

Along with what LC_labrat wrote I would suggest using your first year Master candidates to write grant proposals to gain funding for your future research interest.

I would suggest possibly finding something to study that could be good to research specific to your geographical area and write the proposals to your local/state governing bodies to obtain funding for your equipment/studies.

Your Master students can write the proposals studying why/how the equipment you need the funding for can be used to further the cause. They will be receiving more of a "textbook" learning then hands on research learning but you have to start somewhere!

I think basic TLC and flash chromatography research can be super relevant IF the focus is reducing molecular complexity. Think biological/environmental samples: separating molecules with subtle differences in structure (e.g. chirality, double bond isomers) or separating a few molecules from thousands.

Here's some ideas:

1) Natural product purification

Example: Try to isolate some natural anti-cancer agents from plants or coral. Check out sesquiterpenes to start. Most methods require multiple steps of flash chromatography. Each step is basically a compound class fractionation (i.e. separating acids from neutrals, ketones from alcohols, etc.) so TLC is often used to monitor fraction purity. You would need some access to LC or GC/MS in the last stage to verify structure and purity. Lot of potential here though. Easy to justify funding because cancer.

2) Develop TLC methods with various stationary phases

Example: Try developing new TLC methods with non-traditional stationary phases (e.g. HILIC, chiral, or argentation (silver-thiolate) stationary phases). Check out silicycle.com for reasonably priced functionalized silica gel. You can make your own TLC plates in lab. I believe TLC is still popular for many lipid applications so you could start there. Some challenging separations to focus on are: triglyceride enantiomers, fatty acid double bond positional isomers, cis/trans conjugated linoleic acid isomers. If you use standards, you could potentially avoid LC/GC here.

3) Computational chromatography - quantitative structure retention relationships

Similar to QSAR (i.e. protein/molecule docking activity). You could mine the literature for some detailed compound class separations. Correlate molecular descriptors to retention. Determine best descriptors and build a retention model for a specific stationary phase. Lot of room here for machine learning applications. Make it sound cutting edge to your bosses by proposing a low cost gpgpu computing cluster for deep learning computational chromatography (you could do this for ~$150 with a few raspberry pi's). Say your applications are in-silico pharmaceutical/natural product purifications. Steep learning curve, but lots of opportunity.

Wawoo prismane thats was top comment , thanks indeed

Newchromatographer,

This may sound corny, but regarding a GC, build one. Fundamentally a GC is an oven, flow control, a detector and (heart and soul) a column. Drying oven, pressure regulator, e-bay picoammeter (or diode detector - can send you the article if you send me your e-mail), 9 V battery, swagelok T with a septum plus a needle valve, and learn the old art of packed columns and their basis for separations. Ammonia in feed operations, formaldehyde in buildings, starch pyrolysis gases, CO2 uptake, .... lots of applications I can think of that still use packed columns and simple detectors. At least for your initial crew of students I would think it would be an exceptional experience. Plus, in my opinion, nothing teaches like having to do.

Best regards,

AICMM