Structural characterization of a vegetable oil‐based polyol through liquid chromatography multistage mass spectrometry

Abstract

A commercial vegetable oil‐based polyol for rigid polyurethane foams has been characterized by liquid chromatography‐electrospray ionization‐quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometry (LC‐ESI‐QIT‐MS). The absolute molecular weight (MW = 960) was measured by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) equipped with both refractive index (RI) detector and static laser light‐scattering detector (SLSD), which allowed further analysis by LC‐MS. The oligo‐polyol mixture was first separated in two elutes and then investigated by a deep multistage mass spectrometry (MSn) study and completed using NMR. The major constituents identified were regioisomers of propoxylated sucrose (nPO = 6–12), and the related esters of C16:0, C18:1, and C18:2 fatty acids had a mass ratio of 6:3:1. A comparison of fatty acids composition between the sample and palm oil demonstrated that the sample was initially prepared from the mixture of sucrose and palm oil by direct propoxylation. The MSn fragmentation studies validated the structure of propoxylated sucrose and the related fatty acids derivatives. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2017, 55, 255–262

Separation and determination of polyurethane amine catalysts in polyether polyols by using UHPLC–Q‐TOF‐MS on a reversed‐phase/cation‐exchange mixed‐mode column

“…Moreover, hydroxyl groups in polyether polyols could not be ionizable in weak acid environment at pH 2.7. Thus, polyether polyols with low functionality (OH groups/mol) are well retained on an RP C 18 column , even for the oligomers such as propoxylated sucrose with functionality of 7.4 , while amines catalysts are not. To separate trace amount amine catalysts from the very complex blending polyol matrix, an SPE method was performed using C 18 cartridges.…”