End-column chemiluminescence detection for pressurized capillary electrochromatographic analysis of norepinephrine and epinephrine

A simple and convenient end-column chemiluminescence (CL) detection coupled to pressurized capillary electrochromatography (pCEC) was described. Luminol and N-(4-aminobutyl)-N-ethylisoluminol (ABEI) were adopted as mode compounds to evaluate the feasibility of end-column reactor. Detailed analysis of ABEI revealed that the high sensitivity could be obtained with the reactor. Furthermore, determination of norepinephrine (NE) and epinephrine (EP), which were labeled with ABEI, was accomplished by using the end-column pCEC–CL detection based on ABEI–potassium ferricyanide–alkaline medium CL reaction system. Under the optimum conditions, the detection limit (S/N = 3) of NE and EP was 0.08 μM and 0.06 μM, respectively. The proposed method has also been successfully applied to the analysis of adrenaline hydrochloride injection sample.