Validation of a Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method for Targeted Degradation Compounds of Ethanolamine Used in CO₂Capture: Application to Real Samples

Abstract

In the field of greenhouse gas emission, a promising approach consists in CO<sub>2<sub/> storage and capture. However most of the processes are based on amine solutions which are likely to degrade and produce potentially harmful compounds. So there is a need for analytical methods to identify and quantify these products. Monoethanolamine was used as a model compound for the amines used for CO<sub>2<sub/> capture.A liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the quantification of six products of degradation of monoethanolamine (Glycine, N-(2-hydroxyethyl)glycine, N-glycylglycine, bicine, N,N′-bis-(2-hydroxyethyl) urea (BHE Urea), and diethanolamine) that were systematically detected with a LC-MS Scan method in real samples from CO<sub>2<sub/> capture and storage processes. The main difficulty of this study and its originality ly in the strategy developed to overcome the complexity of the matrix which is a mix of water and amine (70/30): the combined use of deuterated internal standards and a recent chemiometric approach to validate the method, i.e. the accuracy profile. For five compounds it was possible to validate the method with acceptance limits of 20%. This method was then successfully applied to real samples from pilot plant and lab-scale experiments.