EXPERIMENTAL-DESIGN FOR THE OPTIMIZATION OF THE SEPARATION OF ALIPHATIC-AMINES BY ION CHROMATOGRAPHY

The analysis of aliphatic amines in industrial solutions by reversed-phase chromatography presents some drawbacks owing to interferences with system peaks and other compounds in the sample. This technique is applicable only to simple mixtures. Ion chromatography, commonly used for inorganic ions, has been applied to the separation of aliphatic amines and offers the advantage of specificity for ionizable compounds and can be associated with conductivity detectors. The use of alkali metal ions as eluting ions improves the separation. The addition of an organic solvent to the aqueous mobile phase improves the efficiency for long-chain amines. Optimization using chemometric methodology is presented for the separation of alcoholamines and primary, secondary and tertiary alphatic amines using an ion-exchange silica-based column. The influence of the various components of the mobile phase was studied.