The determination of vanillin in a vanilla extract : an analytical undergraduate experiment

Vanillin is an interesting compound, often used in educational chemistry. It can be synthesized from the plant extract eugenol and can be used for the preparation of diverse products. Less attention is paid, however, to the determination of vanillin, although it can be analyzed in a rather simple way. In this article, vanillin is determined in a commercially-available vanilla extract using RP-HPLC equipment and CE apparatus, without any pretreatment. Some student results are presented, giving an indication of the accuracy and precision of the separation techniques RP-HPLC and CE.