Large‐scale Enrichment of Sulfur‐containing Acid in Acetonitrile Using Triazine Analog as the Derivatizing Reagent for Desorption from Humic‐fraction‐modified Silica Gel

The analog of triazine is used as the derivatizing reagent for enriching large‐scale acid (e.g. amino acid) containing a sulfur atom on the humic‐fraction‐modified silica gel in acetonitrile and desorbing from the adsorbent in hexane, respectively. The percent yield of the chemical derivatization under alkaline conditions, ranging from about 8 to almost 100 %, is pH dependent, and varies significantly among these examined analytes, believed to be due to the structure of the analyte, not the derivatizing reagent. The percentage of enrichment, not reproducible under an aqueous environment and independent of the type of triazine analogs, reaches almost 100 % in all cases. The force leading to the adsorption is the complexation between carboxyl groups on analyte and a humic‐fraction‐modified adsorbent based on the adsorption equilibrium results. Consequently, these results are not reproducible under ethyl ether or methanol environments due to the competition for binding sites from solvent molecules.