Development and evaluation of gas and liquid chromatographic methods for the analysis of fatty amines

In contrast to the plethora of publications on the separation of fatty acids, analogous studies involving fatty amines are scarce. A recently introduced ionic-liquid-based capillary column for GC was used to separate trifluoroacetylated fatty amines focusing on the analysis of a commercial sample. Using the ionic liquid column (isothermal mode at 200 °C) it was possible to separate linear primary fatty amines from C12 to C22 chain length in less 25 min with MS identification. The log of the amine retention factors are linearly related to the alkyl chain length with a methylene selectivity of 0.117 kcal/mol for the saturated amines and 0.128 kcal/mol for the mono-unsaturated amines. The sp2 selectivity for unsaturated fatty amines also could be calculated as 0.107 kcal/mol for the ionic liquid column. The commercial sample was quantified by GC with flame ionization detection (FID). An LC method also was developed with a reversed phase gradient separation using acetonitrile/formate buffer mobile phases and ESI-MS detection. Native amines could be detected and identified by their single ion monitoring chromatograms even when partial coelution was observed. The analysis of the commercial sample returned results coherent with those obtained by GC-FID and with the manufacturer's data.