High performance liquid chromatographic determination of acetoacetate by post-column derivatization with p-nitrobenzene diazonium fluoroborate.

We have applied a color-developing reagent, p-nitrobenzene diazonium fluoroborate (diazo reagent) as a post-column derivatization tool for the specific determination of acetoacetate (AcAc) in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A mobile phase consisting of 50 mM KH(2)PO(4), 4 mM tetra-n-butylammonium phosphate (TBAP) as an ion-pair reagent and 2 v/v% methanol, pH 3.5, diazo reagent solution with 0.