Dear friends, my sample is a mixture of various alcohols in water medium. The big problem is the co-existence of alcohols. Since my sample is an environmental sample, operators hesitate to accept for HPLC analysis. Kindly suggest me a method other that HPLC.
But my sample has water content more than 50% by weight. i approached for GC and they replied that it is not possible to do with the system as the water content is more than 5 %.
Hello Tamilarasan,
You may try FTIR (Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy), or UV-VIS-IR spectroscopy in transmission mode. The latter measures absorption of light of various wavelengths (usually in 190-2000 nm) in transparent samples and liquids. The spectrometer subtracts the spectrum of a standard (may be pure water in your case) from that of the test sample during measurement, making it very sensitive. If you can calibrate the spectra properly, it should be possible even to find out the composition of your water+alcohol mixtures. It is a very quick technique and only small quantities of the samples are required. I do not know the absorption bands of alcohols of your interest, but hopefully they are rich in the near-IR region.
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