Hyo Jin Lim (Aekyung Industry)

Hyun Mi Kim (Aekyung Industry)

Hyo Jin Lim (Aekyung Industry)

Hyo Jin Lim (Aekyung Industry)

Hyun Mi Kim (Aekyung Industry)

 Cationic surfactants are surfactants with positively charged functional group that can be useful  in anti-static products such as fabric softeners and hair conditioners. Using a C18 column, conventional analytical methods of cationic surfactants have several problems about peak tailing, carry-over and baseline elevation etc. Therefore, we tried to optimize LC condition of using a HILIC(Hydrophilic interation Liquid Chromatography) system for resolving a various problems. LC separation was achieved for various cationic surfactants with a XBridge BEH HILIC column(100 x 3.0mm, 2.5µm particle size) that is suitable for separation of polar and basic substances. The mobile phase for HILIC system were prepared by mixing solvents (A/B, 9:91, v/v) as follows : (A) Distilled water with 10mM Ammonium formate (pH 3.2, Formic acid) and (B) Acetonitrile.

 In this study, we identified the compounds which are 8 types of cationic surfactants (DDAC, BTAC, CTAC, STAC, LTAC, BKC, EBKC, Modified-ESQ) and 2 types of amphoteric surfactants (CAPB, AO). The accuracy was 90-110 %, and the precision was less than 5 %. Moreover, it showed excellent linearity because the correlation coefficient (r2) of calibration line regression was above 0.99.

 Herein, we established an effective LC method for separation of various cationic / amphoteric surfactants by using HILIC system. Also, it is an appropriate method that can be applied to analysis of surfactant components in hair care products, softeners, laundry detergents and dish washing detergents.