Identification of Ethyl and t-Butyl Glyceryl Ethers Using Gas Chromatography Coupled with Mass Spectrometry

• Autor(a) principal: Veiga,Paula M.
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Veloso,Cláudia O., Dias,Ayres G., Henriques,Cristiane A.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-50532018000601328
• topic: glycerol; ether; GC-MS identification

The ethers produced through the etherification reaction of glycerol with ethanol or t-butanol are used as oxygenated fuel additives, intermediates in the pharmaceutical industry, and non-ionic surfactants. However, the identification of these ethers has not been accurately done, because only some mass spectra of these compounds are available in the libraries. Moreover, there is a lack of discussion on their identification in the literature. In this work, a detailed identification of all ethers produced in the etherification of glycerol with ethanol or t-butanol was performed considering the mass spectra of isolated products and the comparison of the retention times. The elution order of the products was: tri-alkyl, 1,3-dialkyl, 2,3-dialkyl, 3-monoalkyl and 2-monoalkyl. In all mass spectra of the ethyl ethers, the base peak was m/z 61, while in the case of t-butyl ethers it was m/z 57.