Abstract
The present work demonstrates a method by which natural, non-UV absorbing penicillins can be derivatized to form phenacyl esters. The reaction is rapid and essentially completed in twenty minutes. A straight line correlation was found between the peak height of a phenacyl ester derivative and the amount of the penicillin, a fact which attests to the applicability of the method for quantisation. The phenacyl esters of the penicillins studied here were separated on a reversed phase column.