Excitation and Emission Wavelength Optimization of PAHs Using Spectral Auto-Scanning with the FP-4020 Fluorescence Detector

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are comprised of aromatic rings and are produced by the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbon-containing materials such as diesel oil and coal. Some PAHs are known to be carcinogenic, and so the detection and quantitative determination of environmental PAHs is extremely important. An HPLC system with a fluorescence detector can be used for high-sensitivity detection of these samples types by carefully selecting the optimal excitation and emission wavelength pairs for each target analyte. In this application note, the excitation and emission spectra for each PAH was measured using the auto-scan function of the FP-4020 fluorescence detector with control and analysis software ChromNAV 2.0.