Determination of Organic Peroxides by High Performance Liquid Chroma-Tography with Electrochemical Detection

Abstract The application of electrochemical detection to the high performance liquid chromatographic determination of organic peroxides has been studied. The use of a buffered mobile phase was found to be critical to the successful analysis of samples containing hydroperoxides. Using amperometric detection, mixtures of peroxide containing compounds were readily determined. The sensitivity of the amperometric detector was in the one nanogram range for both benzoyl peroxide and cumene hydroperoxide. Polar-ographic detection was found to be a highly reproducible method for the analysis of samples containing peroxides as components of mixtures in the range of 5-2000 ng. The peroxide containing compounds determined in this manner were t-butyl hydroperoxide, cumene hydroperoxide, and 13-hydroperoxy-9(Z)-11(E)-octadecadien-oic acid. The polarographic detection system was used to obtain observed half-wave potentials for the peroxides under different chromatographic conditions. These observations correlated closely with literature results on the polarography of these compounds.