Analysis of Surfactants Using Quadrupole Time-of-Flight LC-MS

User Benefits

- With its accurate mass data acquisition capability, the LCMS-9030 enables extensive screening of surfactants registered in the surfactant compound list. - Continuous detection of surfactants—with their varying degrees of polymerization—enables prediction and identification of the surfactant’s structural information, such as alkyl chains and polyoxyethylene groups. - The system produces chromatograms with low noise and minimally contaminated peaks using extracted ion chromatogram (XIC) with a narrow m/z window.

Introduction

Surfactants have a unique chemical structure with both hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties in the same polymer molecule. Due to these useful properties, surfactants are used in a diverse range of products, from household goods such as kitchen and laundry detergents to foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, pesticides, adhesives, and concrete admixtures. Despite their benefits in a wide range of applications, products containing surfactants are also involved in numerous accidents and incidents, such as contamination or accidental ingestion of foods and beverages and contamination of intravenous fluids administered by healthcare professionals. When determining the causes of these incidents, surfactant analysis can be an effective tool for identifying the cause of contamination. However, this analysis inherently requires an extensive & comprehensive analysis technique given the various surfactants in existence. Moreover, even the same type of surfactant can take the form of numerous compounds with different chain lengths, making continuous detection essential. Within this context, targeted screening using high-resolution LC-MS is very well suited to surfactant analysis. This edition of Application News describes a case study of comprehensive analysis using the LCMS-9030 Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (QTOF) LC-MS system by presenting the results of analysis of tea beverages spiked with surfactants.

July 16, 2024 GMT