I am trying to utilize my equipment as efficient as possible and want to try to run terpenenes (essential oils) on hemp and hops. Has anyone tried this before or does anyone know whom to contact that has experience with this.
Thanks in advantage
harry
Hi, Harry -
Gas chromatography is probably better than HPLC for general terpene analysis. Here's a fairly concise discussion to get you started:
https://cannabisindustryjournal.com/column/instrumentation-used-for-terpene-analysis/
Non-hydrocarbon members of the class, e.g., aldehydes or lactones, seem to work OK on HPLC, and there's lots of more specific information on the web - often free for the googling.
John S Wishnok thank you for the info. seems like I will be wasting my time with HPLC
Yes, we use GC/MS for Terpenes of hemp and hops. It is a very mature technique. HPLC still has many important roles and applications, but this is not one of them.
I would suggest trying a basic keyword search on the web (via GOOGLE, BING) to find lots of example applications, articles, white papers etc for more info.
Essential oils contain mainly volatile compounds. GC or GCMS is always a preferred technique of analysis for them. There are plenty of applications for GC or GCMS for essential oil analysis. It is widely used in perfumery/flavour industries.
As others have pointed out, GC and GC-MS are the best ways to analyze terpenes and essential oils. Mass spectra of isomeric terpenes can be very similar, so you will need to use both the retention indices and the database searches for reliable identification. Many of the compounds of interest are not detectable with UV and are poorly ionized by ESI or even APCI, so HPLC and HPLC-MS is not recommended
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I quite agree with Manon and Robert, GCMS is the instrument of choice for essential oils analysis. You get excellent results , but you may need to check your threshold ,by doing a test run before the actual run. But we work with 3000.
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