Simultaneous separation and quantitative determination of monosaccharides, uronic acids, and aldonic acids by high performance anion-exchange chromatography coupled with pulsed amperometric detection in corn stover prehydrolysates

A method for simultaneous separation and quantitative determination of arabinose, galactose, glucose, xylose, xylonic acid, gluconic acid, galacturonic acid, and glucuronic acid was developed by using high performance anion-exchange chromatography coupled with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD). The separation was performed on a CarboPacTM PA-10 column (250 mm × 2 mm) with a various gradient elution of NaOH-NaOAc solution as the mobile phase. The calibration curves showed good linearity (R2 ≥ 0.9993) for the monosaccharides, uronic acids, and aldonic acids in the range of 0.1 to 12.5 mg/L. The detection limits (LODs) and the quantification limits (LOQs) were 4.91 to 18.75 μg/L and 16.36 to 62.50 μg/L, respectively. Relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the retention times and peak areas for the seven consecutive determinations of an unknown amount of mixture were 0.15% to 0.44% and 0.22% to 2.31%, respectively. The established method was used to separate and determine four monosaccharides, two uronic acids, and two aldonic acids in the prehydrolysate from dilute acid steam-exploded corn stover within 21 min. The spiked recoveries of monosaccharides, uronic acids, and aldonic acids ranged from 91.25% to 108.81%, with RSDs (n=3) of 0.04% ~ 6.07%. This method was applied to evaluate the quantitative variation of sugar and sugar acid content in biomass prehydrolysates.