Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
Gas Chromatography/Electron Ionization Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Oligomeric Polyethylene Glycol Mono Alkyl Ethers
1Adebayo O. Onigbinde, 2Burnaby Munson and 3Bamidele M.W. Amos-tautua
1Department of Basic Sciences, Chemistry Unit, Babcock University, Ilishan, Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria
2Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware Newark DE, 19716, USA
3Department of Chemistry, Niger-Delta University, Bayelsa State, Nigeria
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2013 7:2332-2339
Received: June 13, 2012 | Accepted: August 28, 2012 | Published: March 11, 2013
Abstract
Polyethylene Glycol Monoalkyl Ethers, CxH2x+1 (OC2H4)n OH, (PEGMAE), are polar compounds like Polyethylene Glycols (PEG) and they undergo microbial degradation which produces toxic substances that are potentially dangerous to the environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to carry out proper identification and characterization of these compounds. The Electron Ionization (EI) and Chemical Ionization (CI) spectra of various PEGMAE were obtained by Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) and were used to identify and characterize these compounds. The characteristic cleavages in the EI and CI reactions of PEGMAEs were also studied. The results obtained showed that the methane CI mass spectra of the PEGMAE contain MH+ ions and fragment ions similar to those found in their EI mass spectra. The relative abundances of the MH+ ions are low, variable and increase with increasing sample size across the chromatographic peaks; but do not increase with increasing x or n. The base peaks of the low mass oligomers (x3) are PEG related (e.g., m/z 45, 59) but those of higher mass oligomers (x4) include the ion at m/z 63 (HOC2H4OH) H+ or m/z 107 (HO (C2H4O) 2 H) H+. There are no (MH-H2O)+ ions or protonated dimer ions (n2, x2) in the spectra of PEGMAE. The Relative Molar Sensitivities (RMS) or the Relative Sensitivity per Gram (RSG) increases linearly with molecular polarizabilty or molecular weight with a non-zero intercept.
Keywords:
Electron, methane chemical ionization, polyethylene glycol ethers,
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
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ISSN (Online): 2040-7467
ISSN (Print): 2040-7459 |
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