Characterization and study of piperazinium salts, degradation products of nitrogen mustards by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

We synthesized and analyzed the degradation products, piperazinium salts from bis(2-chloroethyl)methylamine (HN2) and bis(2-chloroethyl)ethylamine (HN1) using ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Piperazinium salt is the major degradation product of HN2, not N-methyldiethanolamine above a concentration of 0.01 M in water and is a non-scheduled chemical that may be generally assumed relevant to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) within the context of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) proficiency test.