Quantification of complex mixtures by NMR

NMR has firmly established itself as an analytical tool that can quantify analyte concentrations in complex mixtures in a rapid, cost-effective, accurate and precise manner. Here, the technological advances with respect to instrumentation, sample preparation, data acquisition and data processing over the past decade will be discussed. It will be shown that besides mainstream 1D 1H NMR also homo- and heteronuclear 2D experiments are gaining practical use. An overview will be given of the widespread applications of qNMR in diverse applications areas, ranging from foods, biomedicine to natural and pharmaceutical product analysis. Yet, qNMR is still limited to the quantification of a limited number of target compounds. Considering the current rate of developments in NMR acquisition and data processing, it is envisaged that in the near future a much wider range of analytes can be simultaneously assessed in a routine manner at even lower operational cost.