Separation of lidocaine and its metabolites by capillary electrophoresis using volatile aqueous and nonaqueous electrolyte systems

The separation of the basic drug lidocaine and six of its metabolites has been investigated both by using volatile aqueous electrolyte system, at low pH and by employing non‐aqueous electrolyte systems. In aqueous systems, the best separation of the compounds under the investigated conditions was achieved by using the electrolyte 60 mM trifluoroacetic acid (TFA)/triethylamine (TEA) at pH 2.5 containing 15% methanol. With this electrolyte, all seven compounds were well separated with high efficiency and migration time repeatability. The separations with bare fused‐silica capillaries and polyacrylamide‐coated capillaries were compared with higher separation efficiency with the latter. On the other hand, near baseline separation of all the seven compounds was also obtained by employing the non‐aqueous electrolyte, 40 mM ammonium acetate in methanol and TFA (99:1, v/v), with comparable migration time repeatability but lower separation efficiency relative to the aqueous system.