Acetonitrile Shortage

Alternative water-miscible polar organic solvents

2009-01-15, 14:00 

At present there is, as most of you already are aware of, a global shortage of acetonitrile. This is a real nuisance, since it is the favorite organic solvent for many of us (due to its elution strength, low viscosity, and good miscibility with water). It has impact on our productivity and elevates the cost per analysis for many applications. This shortage is probably temporary, but in the meantime there are ways to reduce or replace the use of our preferred solvent for both HILIC and reversed phase applications.

To assist fellow chromatographers, we have here listed a few suggestions on how you can reduce your consumption of acetonitrile while avoiding or minimizing the negative impact on your chromatographic results.

An obvious strategy to reduce solvent consumption is to decrease the column inner diameter. With the Merck SeQuant™ ZIC®-HILIC column this is straightforward, since the separations are truly scalable between all column dimensions, see SeQuant Application Note 2700-09A below.

Changing to another polar organic solvent is another way of circumventing the acetonitrile shortage problem. The texts about Solvents for HILIC in the HILIC Technology section on this website contains a list of solvents suitable for HILIC separations. Further information on this topic can also be found in the free booklet A Practical Guide to HILIC. The Applicaion Note and Technical Note listed below contain examples of HILIC separations that use organic solvents other than acetonitrile. The scientific papers listed below are also good sources of information on solvent alternatives.

 

Scientific References

  • Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography (HILIC) Coupled to Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS) utilizing a Mobile Phase with a Low-Volatile Organic Modifier for the Determination of Cisplatin, and its Monohydrolyzed Metabolite
    Y. Nygren, P. Hemström, C. Åstot, P. Naredi, E. Björn
    J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 23 (2008) 948-954
     
  • Alternative Organic Solvents for HILIC Separation of Cisplatin Species with On-Line ICP-MS Detection
    P. Hemström, Y. Nygren, E. Björn, K. Irgum
    J. Sep. Sci., 31 (2008) 599-603 
     
  • Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography with Alcohol as a Weak Eluent
    M. Liu, J. Ostovica, E. Chena, N. Cauchona
    J. Chromatogr. A., (2009) in press

 

[ZIC®-HILIC »]     [What is HILIC? »]     [HILIC Applications »]

 

 

 


[News Archive]