The paper reviews the methods described in the literature for the determination of total dissolved free primary amines (TDFPA) by fluorescence. A wide set of reaction conditions can be found, but they rely on few experiments for their validation. Among fluorogenic compounds, o-plithaldialdehyde (OPA) is more sensitive than fluorescamine and was thus examined here. However, the use of mercaptoethanol (ME) in the reaction (as ail additional derivatization compound) is able to generate unreliable results, in particular when standardization relies on glycine. We suggest replacing ME with 3-mercaptopropionic acid (MPA) which induces more stable and comparable fluorescence among amine Compounds. A systematic study was therefore undertaken to define reagent... |