Dear Young Cheol Ki ,

Two colorimetric tests comes to my mind.

The first is "Le Rosen test" which I illustrate in one of the drawing with toluene. For your purpose, I think phenol is more adapted as soluble in water. A typical procedure should be preparing a test tube containing water, sulfuric acid and phenol. Via a canule, you bubble the gaz formed in your reaction into this solution. A red colour should appear in the presence of formaldehyde when forming the p-quinoïdal adduct as illustrated.

A second test could be the formation of a dihydropyridine compound (deep yellow and fluorescent). You can bubble your reaction into a hot vial (60-80°C) containing ammonium acetate (~ 2.5 g for 10 mL of water and 0.3 mL of glacial acetic acid and an amount of acetylacetone).

I hope this could help you !

yes Corentin Lefebvre

Some quantitative tests for aldehydes and ketones are based on 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) reaction, forming colored compounds which can be separated ans quantified by HPLC. There are commercial DNPH-coated sorbents which can be used for carbonyl compounds detection.

What about using GC MS?

Hi,

You could use Girard's Reagent P which can react with formaldehyde in solution and generate stably-charged salt product. The resulting molecule will be non-volatile and its permanent charge will make it easier to detect with LC-MS.

Thank you everyone.

I will also try to give any help to someone who need help.

Thank you again

Have a nice day.