Application of 10-ethyl-acridine-3-sulfonyl chloride for HPLC determination of aliphatic amines in environmental water using fluorescence and APCI-MS.

A simple, sensitive method for the determination of aliphatic amines based on a sulfonylation reaction using 10-ethyl-acridine-3-sulfonyl chloride (EASC) as pre-column labeling reagent with fluorescence detection and APCI-MS identification has been developed. The labeled derivatives exhibited high stability and were enough to be efficiently analyzed by HPLC with an excitation maximum at lambda(ex) 270 nm and an emission maximum at lambda(em) 430 nm. Identification of derivatives was carried out by online post-column MS in positive-ion mode. Comparing with the widely used 5-dimethylaminonaphthalene-1-sulfonylchloride (Dansyl-Cl), EASC-amine derivatives not only exhibited high fluorescence but also exhibited excellent MS ionizable potential. Detection limits obtained from 0.10 pmol injection, at a S/N of 3, were 4.0-12.7 fmol. The mean intra- and inter-assay precision for all aliphatic amine levels were <3.84 and 3.21%, respectively. Excellent linear responses were observed with coefficients of >0.9995.