Vanillin is an interesting compound, often used in educational chemistry. It can be synthesized from the plant extract eugenol and can be used for the preparation of diverse products. Less attention is paid, however, to the determination of vanillin, although it can be analyzed in a rather simple way. In this article, vanillin is determined in a commercially-available vanilla extract using RP-HPLC equipment and CE apparatus, without any pretreatment. Some student results are presented, giving an indication of the accuracy and precision of the separation techniques RP-HPLC and CE.
Supplement
Notes for the instructors and student data from the experiments are available.
Our Secondary School editors work hard to distill all the JCE materials to produce a fraction of particular interest to high school teachers. We call it CLIC.
In recent years we have worked hard to better match our advertisers with our readers. When shopping for chemistry education materials, visit our advertisers' WWW sites first.
Take JCE along on your outreach missions. Copies of the Journal, guest access to JCE Online, our publications catalog, and more are available for your participants.