Ionic liquids as silica deactivating agents in gas chromatography for direct analysis of primary amines in water

Analysis of primary amines in aqueous samples remains a challenging analytical issue. The preferred approach by gas chromatography is hampered by interactions of free silanol groups with the highly reactive amine groups, resulting in inconsistent measurements. Here, we report a method for direct analysis of aliphatic amines and diamines in aqueous samples by gas chromatography (GC) with silanol deactivation using ionic liquids (ILs). ILs including trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium bis 2,4,4-(trimethylpentyl)phosphinate (Cyphos IL-104), 1-methyl-3-propylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide [pmim][Tf(2)N] and N″-ethyl-N,N,N',N'-tetramethylguanidinium tris(pentafluoroethyl)trifluorophosphate [etmg][FAP] were tested as deactivating media for the GC liner. Solutions of these ILs in methanol were injected in the system prior to the analysis of primary amines. Butane-1,4-diamine (putrescine, BDA) was used as a reference amine. The best results were obtained using the imidazolium IL [pmim][Tf(2)N]. With this deactivator, excellent reproducibility of the analysis was achieved, and the detection limit of BDA was as low as 1mM. The applicability of the method was proven for the analysis of two different primary amines (C4-C5) and pentane-1,5-diamine.