Detection of residual formaldehyde in N-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate by high-performance liquid chromatography with rhodamine B hydrazide.

• Rhodamine B hydrazide was proposed as a new derivatizing reagent for formaldehyde. • A rapid, selective and sensitive HPLC method for residual formaldehyde in a drug was developed and validated. • The proposed method has the advantages of mild derivatization temperature, short derivatization time, and high sensitivity. Rhodamine B hydrazide (RBH) was prepared as a new derivatizing reagent for residual formaldehyde in a drug such as N-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate (NBCA). RBH reacted with formaldehyde rapidly at room temperature, and the resulting derivative can be detected sensitively at 238 nm. After optimizing the derivatization and chromatographic separation conditions, RBH as a pre-column derivatizing reagent has been successfully used for the analysis of formaldehyde in real NBCA samples by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The detection limit of the method is 0.004 μg/mL for formaldehyde, and the recovery is 94.0%-96.6%. Most notably, compared with the previous HPLC methods, the developed method has the advantages of mild derivatization temperature, short derivatization time and high sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]