A novel approach to determination of carbonyl groups in DMAc/LiCl-insoluble pulps by fluorescence labeling

The CCOA method for profiling of carbonyl groups by fluorescence labeling has meanwhile become an established procedure for dissolving pulps and rag papers. High molecular weight pulps, such as certain paper pulps, could not be analyzed so far due to their limited solubility in DMAc/LiCl. The new approach presented in this paper is based on the heterogeneous carbonyl-selective fluorescence labeling with CCOA (2), which is subsequently released with triflic acid from the labeled pulp in a quantitative manner, and the concentration of CCOA and CCOA-derived products is determined by HPLC. The procedure requires material in the mg range only. Calibration was performed against DMAc/LiCl-soluble standard pulps. Comparison of the data obtained by the novel approach correlated well with data from the established CCOA procedure.