For a company working in the food industry, IPOS developed quantitative analysis of lipid soluble vitamins using LC-QQQ-MS in food and healthcare products. This challenging analysis used saponification of the sample and extraction of the vitamins into hexane. A normal phase method was developed that was capable of resolving cis- and trans-vitamins A, vitamin D2 and D3, and nine different components of vitamin E, some of which were isobaric. The method gave excellent linearity and was capable of quantifying many of the vitamins as low as 20 pg on-column concentration.

Working for a company in the environmental industry IPOS developed methods for low level detection of pesticide and herbicides using both targeted LC-QQQ-MS analysis and also HRAM screening analysis. Our extensive mass spectral pesticide/herbicide library allows thousands of compounds to be screened. One notable example from this project was the LC-QQQ-MS method for metaldehyde in drinking water. This analysis used d16-metaldehyde as an internal standard and was optimised to be capable of quantitative detection down to 1.25ppt, with a detection limit of 0.38ppt in both raw and drinking water.