HPLC and HPLC-MS are powerful and wide ranging analytical tools employed in every aspect of modern chemical and biomedical research. The use of these tools is currently restricted to formal laboratory environments, partly due to cost and complexity but also owing to the special handling requirements for the solvents consumed and waste generated by these instruments. Ongoing innovations targeting the decrease in cost, size, and complexity of HPLC and HPLC-MS instrumentation raise the intriguing possibility that such tools may soon become both mobile and widespread in usage, breaking free of traditional laboratory boundaries. However, the dependence of these techniques on regulated organic solvents currently limits such mobility. In this study, we investigate the use of distilled alcohol spirits (cachaça, rum, vodka, aguardiente, etc.) as well as other household items typically available in a supermarket (vinegar, ammonia) as mobile phases and additives for carrying out HPLC and HPLC-MS experiments, showing that in many cases excellent analytical performance can be obtained using these low cost, universally available, green alternatives to the organic solvents typically used in such studies.
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Welch et al. (2015) studied this question.
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