Today, the supply shortage of acetonitrile, which is one of the most widely used organic solvents in HPLC analysis, became extremely hot topic. Raw acetonitrile is obtained as a co-product of acrylonitrile, which is used in automobile component. As a consequence of the global economic recession and the associated reduction of demand for acrylonitrile, there has been a serious decrease in the supply of acetonitrile.
Methanol, which is also widely used as mobile phase, is easily available at a low price. In this note, how to use methanol instead of acetonitrile is described. What should be paid attention to are elution strength, elution order, and back pressure.