| Residues from explosives have been found to damage the environment and have a detrimental effect on animal health. A forensic chemist needs to be able to identify and quantify chemicals in an explosive, but the difficulty lies in the large amount of chemicals composing explosives and the structural similarity between them.;HPLC, High Performance Liquid Chromatography, is the preferred technique used in explosive analysis since it does not require the analyte to be heated, thus it is safe to use on these thermally unstable chemicals. It is also able to detect and separate the chemicals fairly well. The current separation method for commonly found explosives, EPA Method 8330, requires two columns and can be both expensive and time consuming. Because of this, ionic liquids could be used to hopefully lower both the cost and the amount of time needed for the separation.;Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) are salts with melting points close to room temperature. They are highly polar, nonvolatile, nonflammable, stable in air or water and recyclable, thus making excellent solvents. RTILs can be used to adjust the selectivity and enhance resolution of HPLC. They could be used to develop a quicker and less expensive method than EPA Method 8330.;The focus of this paper is placed on the explosives, their instrumental analysis and the possible effects of ionic liquids on the current methods. |
