title: Analysis of carbonic acid in water samples by ion-exclusion chromatography with pure water as eluent.
abstract: A simple, sensitive and rapid ion-exclusion chromatographic method for the simultaneous separation of carbonic acid and short chain organic acids (formic acid, acetic acid, and propionic acid) has been developed. A weakly acidic cation exchange resin column TSKgel OApak-A was used for the separation; pure water, owing to its lower background conductance, was employed as eluent in order to obtain high detection sensitivity. A good separation of these weak acids was achieved in 16 min. The linear range of the peak area calibration curve for carbonic acid was from 3.0 mg/L to 500 mg/L. The conductivity detection limit calculated at S/N = 3 was 0.084 mg/L for carbonic acid. The method developed in this work was successfully applied to the determination of carbonic acid in several environmental water samples without any pretreatment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Mingyu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Kazuhiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: Wenzhi
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu