As one of the preliminaries for answering the question around the presence of half aldehyde in autoxidized oil, the author has studies the application of paper-partition chromatography to 2.4-dinitrophenylhydrazones of acidic carbonyl compounds.
After testing a number of developing solvents, the author proposes in this paper the use of a mixture of hexane, glacial acetic acid, and xylene (5:1:3). This mixture is quite excellent in giving compact spots of the hydrazones. Though the Rf tends a little to fluctuate as it does in the case of neutral carbonyl compounds studied by other workers using various solvents, it has been ascertained that the identification can successfully be done with this new solvent if an authentic specimen of likely hydrazone is run in parallel with the sample to be known.
The Rf's of 2.4-dinitrophenylhydrazones of some acidic carbonyl compounds, observed by using this solvent, are listed in Table 1.