Skip to main content

Analytical methods

For product quality and conformity
Analytical methods

Analytical chemistry is used to identify, characterize and quantify different substances. Deployed depending on the sample to be analyzed, analytical methods are essential to ensure quality control at all stages of production, as is the case at all Seppic production sites – with systematic analyses of raw materials, intermediate products, and finished products. They can guarantee the quality and conformity of Seppic's ingredients.

Analytical methods are indispensable in the development of new ingredients in our innovation laboratories, used in particular to better define chemical structures and optimize their production process. They are also used to validate processes and procedures for cleaning reactors in production, and for the approval of new raw materials.

Multiple analytical skills

Highly developed analytical skills are required, and in particular, the mastery of chromatographic techniques, such as:

  • Liquid phase chromatography, high performance and ultra performance inverse phase chromatography (HPLC, U-HPLC) with many detection systems: UV-visible, refractive index, ELSD (light scattering evaporative detector), CAD  Charged aerosol detector, mass spectrometry MS and MS-MS, 
  • Liquid phase ion chromatography,
  • Gas chromatography (detection by flame ionization or by mass spectrometry),
  • Gel permeation or steric exclusion chromatography (GPC/SEC).
Liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS) Liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS)
Characterization of the composition of an ingredient: confirmation of structures Characterization of the composition of an ingredient: confirmation of structures

These analytical skills are complemented by other techniques such as:

  • Spectrometry: inductively coupled plasma (ICP-OES), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR)
  • Chemical (acid-base, redox, etc.) and physico-chemical (rheology, viscometry, granulometry, etc.) analyses,
  • Total organic carbon (TOC) analysis,
  • Thermal analysis (differential scanning calorimetry: DSC)
ICP-OES spectrometer & IRFT spectrometer ICP-OES spectrometer & IRFT spectrometer

Necessary skills to follow regulatory changes

Analytical methods are key to responding to the multiplication, and increasing complexity, of regulations. Regulations require increasingly detailed toxicological and eco-toxicological analytical dossiers to be provided, including the purity of ingredients, the determination of their components, and any impurities at very low concentrations.