Unravelling the structures of molecules contained within complex mixtures

Mixtures are found everywhere from food and drink, manufacturing to our natural environment.

Many contain unknown molecules or are so complex that standard chromatographic methods fail to separate individual molecules contained within them.

Typically, identification of only a handful of compounds is possible and a large number of unknown compounds prevents structure-function relationships to be explored.

This project aims to develop approaches to combine chromatographic separation ad high-end analytical techniques to elucidate structure of unknown compounds using NMR spectroscopy, HPLC-FT-ICR-MS and GC-GC-TOF-MS.

The project will explore application of existing methods and develop new methodologies using a range of mixtures from peat organic matter to Scotch whisky.