HPLC‐ELSD determination of kanamycin B in the presence of kanamycin A in fermentation broth

A novel method for the direct determination of kanamycin B in the presence of kanamycin A in fermentation broth using high performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detector (HPLC‐ELSD) was developed. An Agilent Technologies C₁₈ column was utilized, evaporation temperature of 40°C and nitrogen pressure of 3.5 bar, the optimized mobile phase was water–acetonitrile (65:35, v/v), containing 11.6 mm heptafluorobutyric acid (isocratic elution with flow rate of 0.5 mL/min) with the gain 11. Kanamycin B was eluted at 5.6 min with an asymmetry factor of 1.827. The method showed good linearity over the concentration range of 0.05 to 0.80 mg/mL for the kanamycin B (r² = 0.9987). The intra‐day and inter‐day coefficients of variation obtained from kanamycin B were less than 4.3%. Mean recovery of kanamycin B from spiked fermentation broth was 95%. The developed method was applied to the determination of kanamycin B without any interference from other constituents in the fermentation broth. This method offers simple, rapid and quantitative detection of kanamycin B. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.