Potential of CE/MS for Small Carboxylic Acids Analysis as Alternative to GC/MS Reference Analytical Methods

GC/MS (Gas Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry) is the analytical method of choice for carboxylic acids analysis because of good sensitivity, low limit of detection and the possibility to compare the pattern of fragmentation with existing databases for identification. However GC requires that the analytes are volatile. If it is not the case, the use of chemicals in order to perform the derivatization is mandatory, this may induce analytical bias.

CE (Capillary electrophoresis) is a technique of choice for ions separation without prior treatments. The method is fast and do not require highly technical skills. A UV detector is the most common detection method; however electrospray mass spectrometry detection is recently gaining interest, while it really helps for structural information of the detected compounds.

In this poster, the preliminary results of CE/MS analysis of several carboxylic acids are presented. All carboxylic acids are analyzed without any sample pretreatment. These acids looked at are from the “Citric Acid Cycle” including pyruvate and some isotope labeled analogues but also glyoxylate, lactate, oxalate and tartrate.

Moreover, the preliminary results of a sample preparation approach to remove phosphate salts are presented. Phosphate is a very common salt that is often used in biological buffers but prevents the derivatization of carboxylic acid for GC/MS analysis and reduces the reproducibility of results for both GC/MS and CE/MS analysis.