DETERMINATION OF KETAMINE AND SOME DILUENTS IN WASTEWATER USING LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY TANDEM MASS SPECRTOSCOPY

Abstract

In manufacturing nacortics, apart from the non-bioactive agents used as diluents just to increase the mass, some pharmaceutical compounds are also used as diluent agents to combine the bioactivity. These diluents are normally added during the final manufacturing or packaging step. Therefore, the determination of these diluents in wastewater may contribute to the investigation of illegal nacortic production site.  In this study, an ultraperformance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometric method was used for the simultaneous analysis of ketamine and 6 diluent agents (nicotiamide, trimethoprim, chlorpheniramin, cafein, paracetamol and dextropropoxyphen) in wastewater, using liquid-liquid extraction for sample treatment. The chromatographic method was developed using C18 column with acetonitrile and water containing 0.1% acid formic as mobile phase, and detected by (ESI+) with MRM signal. Validation results proved the feasibility of the method for application. The correlation coefficients of the calibration curves were 0.9981 – 0.9995 for the quantitation range of 0.05 ppb to 10.0 ppb. The repeatability result is good with RSD% (2.9% - 11.0%) at different concentrations.