Essential oils represent a valuable product, widely employed in several fields such as the flavor, fragrance and food industries. The volatile fraction of essential oils is usually rather complex, can be composed of hundreds of compounds, mainly monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes and their oxygenated counterparts, which are difficulty separated in a single GC run. It is common, both for qualitative and quantitative purposes, to analyze essential oils on both apolar and polar columns [1]. Polar columns are often used in order to resolve coelutions that can possibly occur on apolar stationary phases. Non-polar columns, however, are preferred in the identification, performed with an MS detector, of unknown compounds with the simultaneous use of linear retention index (LRI) data as an additional filter, mainly because LRI values, which are calculated using a reference series of n-alkanes often present a fluctuating retention behavior on polar columns. Recently a new class of compounds has received increasing attention for their exploitation as GC stationary phases, namely room temperature ionic liquids (ILs), that have recently demonstrated great suitability in the analysis of essential oils [2] being capable of unravelling coelutions that could arise on the most widely used polar column in such an application. In this work a novel IL GC column, recently commercially available, has been evaluated towards the separation of terpene compounds, in terms of peak symmetry and resolution of target volatile analytes and, furthermore, it has been applied to the analysis of a peppermint essential oil; the results have been compared to those attained on the polyethyleneglycol phase.

Enhanced Resolution Of Terpene Compounds By Using An Ionic LiquidStationary Phase In Peppermint Essential Oil Analysis

RAGONESE, CARLA;SCIARRONE, Danilo;DUGO, Paola;MONDELLO, Luigi
2012-01-01

Abstract

Essential oils represent a valuable product, widely employed in several fields such as the flavor, fragrance and food industries. The volatile fraction of essential oils is usually rather complex, can be composed of hundreds of compounds, mainly monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes and their oxygenated counterparts, which are difficulty separated in a single GC run. It is common, both for qualitative and quantitative purposes, to analyze essential oils on both apolar and polar columns [1]. Polar columns are often used in order to resolve coelutions that can possibly occur on apolar stationary phases. Non-polar columns, however, are preferred in the identification, performed with an MS detector, of unknown compounds with the simultaneous use of linear retention index (LRI) data as an additional filter, mainly because LRI values, which are calculated using a reference series of n-alkanes often present a fluctuating retention behavior on polar columns. Recently a new class of compounds has received increasing attention for their exploitation as GC stationary phases, namely room temperature ionic liquids (ILs), that have recently demonstrated great suitability in the analysis of essential oils [2] being capable of unravelling coelutions that could arise on the most widely used polar column in such an application. In this work a novel IL GC column, recently commercially available, has been evaluated towards the separation of terpene compounds, in terms of peak symmetry and resolution of target volatile analytes and, furthermore, it has been applied to the analysis of a peppermint essential oil; the results have been compared to those attained on the polyethyleneglycol phase.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11570/2036682
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