Presentation Abstract

The recognition of solvent peaks is part of what we call automatic peaks editing. In a sense it is a refinement of the GSD (Global Spectral Deconvolution) process which ends up with a table of peaks present in a 1D spectrum. The AutoEdit procedure than attempts a classification of the peaks according to a number of criteria (compound, reference, solvent, impurity, 13C satellite, labile, weak, etc.). The classification is an essential step required before attempting any structure verification, be it automatic (ASV) or manual.

The solvent recognition, in particular, is definitely non-trivial. At some point, the development of this procedure started implying that the system must be "teached" how to apply all the criteria and tricks which usually enable an experienced chemist to decide which peaks in the spectrum belong to the primary and secondary solvent. The result is a sophisticated and ever more capable NMR solvent-recognition wizard, based on modern scoring techniques and a long list of scoring criteria to be applied to all candidate peaks.

In this presentation, the criteria are discussed and the wizard's performance is illustrated.