Retention indices... sesquiterpenes and Wax columns

[Chris Jones]

Hi All,

Long time since I have posted here.

I am working on a complex mixture of sesquiterpenes, predominantly bicyclics like the cadinenes, muurolenes, bulnesenes, sesquiphellandrenes, selinenes, eudesmenes... Anyway, their mass spectrums look mightly similar.

So I have been calculating retention indicies and trying to compare these to published datasets. Unfortunately the standard proceedure uses a DB-5 or HP-5 type stationary phase. I seem to get excellent separation using a DB-WAX, but none of the retention indices are determined on wax columns.

Does anyone have access to a reference collection using a DB-WAX column or something similar? MassFinder has been very helpful, but I'm limited to the HP-5 / BD-5 column data.

Thanks in advance,

Chris Jones
School of Plant Biology, UWA
Perth, Western Australia

[AICMM]

Mr. Jones,

Just for kicks I looked at cadinene on the NIST web book page (http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/name-ser.html) for retention indices but they too are all DB-5 or DB-1 type columns.

Strike one as we say in the States.

Good luck...

[Chris Jones]

Bugger. Thanks anyway AICMM

Alberquerque (sp.) that's where Bugs Bunny was forever getting lost wasn't he?

Oh well, I have been able to find some identifications in the literature - a compound here, two compounds there...

My kingdom for some authentic standards!

CHRIS

[AICMM]

Chris,

I knew I should have turned left.... That's the one.

No but seriously folks, ... have you contacted UC Boulder? If I am not mistaken (reaching deep into the cobwebs of my mind) they have done work on terpenes in air (what lead to a version of the SCD) and may have more useful information on retention indices.

Good luck.

Matthew