Separation of Urea, Hexamethylenetetramine and Their Reaction Products in Sol-Gel Feed Solution by Zwitterionic HILIC

Different chromatographic parameters such as organic modifiers, pH of mobile phase, buffer concentration, column temperature etc. were studied to arrive at the optimum conditions for separation.

The compounds such as urea, monomethylolurea, dimethylolurea and HMTA were separated from a synthetic mixture using a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and acetate buffer of pH 6. The methodology developed based on HILIC stationary phase is simple and amicable for integration with ESI-MS to identify the unknown reaction products. The methodology was applied for the separation of reaction products in a pre-boiled and an untreated urea-HMTA mixtures used as feed in sol-gel process.