CHEM 6640 - Chemical Separations

Prerequisite: evidence of mastery of the concepts of chemistry as demonstrated with a B.S. degree in chemistry or biology. Equivalent university undergraduate courses are CHEM 2202 and CHEM 2221. Biological systems contain many thousands of different organic compounds that are present at very low concentrations. This course deals with current methods of separating, detecting, and quantifying pharmaceuticals and associated metabolites and other "small molecule" organic agents present in complex animal and agricultural samples. Clean-up methods include liquid and solid phase extractions, gel filtration, size-exclusion, ion-exchange, and affinity chromatography. Analytical methods emphasize HPLC, GC with MS and flourescence detection, and detection-oriented derivatization. Comparison and evaluation of different techniques are presented with practical examples. 3 credits.