Acetone as a greener alternative to acetonitrile in liquid chromatographic fingerprinting

Abstract

A considerable amount of chemical waste from liquid chromatography analysis is generated worldwide. Acetonitrile is the most employed solvent in liquid chromatography analyses since it exhibits favorable physicochemical properties for separation and detection, but it is an unwelcome solvent from an environmental point of view. Acetone might be a much greener alternative to replace acetonitrile in reversed-phase liquid chromatography, since both share similar physicochemical properties, but its applicability with ultraviolet absorbance-based detectors is limited. In this work, a reference method using acetonitrile and high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to an ultraviolet photodiode array detector coupled to a corona charged aerosol detector system was developed to fingerprint a complex sample. The possibility of effectively substituting acetonitrile with acetone was investigated. Design of experiments was adopted to maximize the number of peaks acquired in both fingerprint developments. The methods with acetonitrile or acetone were successfully optimized and proved to be statistically similar when only the number of peaks or peak capacity was taken into consideration. However, the superiority of the latter was evidenced when parameters of separation and those related to greenness were heuristically combined. A green, comprehensive, time- and resource-saving approach is presented here, which is generic and applicable to other complex matrices. Furthermore, it is in line with environmental legislation and analytical trends.

Environmental risk-based ranking of solvents using the combination of a multimedia model and multi-criteria decision analysis

“…Acetone, placed at five in the ranking, is referred as a green alternative, along with ethanol, and is used as a green mobile phase constituent in liquid chromatography. 42 The next two ranking locations are scored by acetic and formic acids. Their parameters do not differ much since formic acid is more toxic, but more readily biodegradable and is characterized by a lower POCP.…”

Drying of the Natural Fibers as A Solvent-Free Way to Improve the Cellulose-Filled Polymer Composite Performance

“…Luckily, many common solvents, e.g., acetone [13], methanol [14], ethanol [15], butanol [16], isopropanol [17], ethyl acetate [18], and 2-methyltetrahydrofuran [19], may be produced from renewable feedstocks rather than from petroleum [20]. Additionally, the list of preferably used solvents [20,21] includes water [22], acetone [23], ethanol [24], 2-propanol [25], 1-propanol [26], methanol [27], 1-butanol [28]. Some repetitions between these two lists may be visible.…”

Aspects of determining biomass-based levoglucosenone by UHPLC–UV in aqueous samples

“…Replacing acetonitrile with acetone in the mobile phase was explored to reduce the decomposition of LGO in the solutions, and also because acetone is considered a much 'greener' solvent [20].…”