On-line reductive cyclic voltammetric analysis of the anticancer agents mitomycin C, some of its degradation products and profiromycin

An automatic, reliable, scanning reductive electrochemical detection system is described for on-line qualitative and semi-quantitative determination and characterization of electro-active compounds in effluentsfrom high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) systems. Applying a static mercury drop electrode, detection can be performed at constant potential for quantitative analysis (current range: 50 nA F.S.) at a routine base. Applying potential scans, qualitative analysis can be performed (current range: 0"5 4 F.S.). The system consists of easily obtainable commercial hardware, combined with commonly available chromatographic and electrochemical apparatus. Special attention has been paid to automatic, multi-reference-point component detection, data storage in a Ramdisk, machine language noise filtering, automatic half-wave potential and peak potential calculation and a high-resolution paper copy of the chromatograms and voltammo-grams. The system has been evaluated through analysis of mitomycin C, porfiromycin and the degradation products of mitomycin C from alkaline and acid hydrolysis.