title: Determination of perfluorinated carboxylic acids in water using liquid chromatography coupled to a corona-charged aerosol detector.
abstract: Perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) are persistent pollutants being widely detected in the environment. In order to quantitatively determine PFCAs, a simple and rapid method for the simultaneous determination of five PFCAs was developed by coupling high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) separation and corona-charged aerosol detector (CAD). The PFCAs were separated on a Symmerry(®) C8 analytical column (150mm×3.9mm) under isocratic conditions with a mobile phase consisting of 5mM ammonium acetate (pH4.9±0.2) and methanol (30:70 (v/v)) at the flow rate 1mL min(-1). Ammonium acetate as ion pairing agent was added to the mobile phase for better separation and peak shapes. The elaborated method was validated for linearity, precision and accuracy. The detection limits ranged from 1.5 to 4.4μg L(-1) for PFCAs with C atoms of C4 to C8, which were decreased further to 75 to 220ng L(-1) after 20-fold preconcentration. The method was confirmed to have good precision with relative standard deviation of 0.9%-4.2% for intraday measurements and 0.9%-4.1% for interday measurements. The optimized method was applied to analyze practical wastewater samples with satisfactory results.
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China; Key Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials Science of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Material Science, South-Central University for Nationalities, Wuhan 430074, PR China.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China.
authors.forename: Mantang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China. Electronic address: lhzhu63@hust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Lihua
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials Science of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Material Science, South-Central University for Nationalities, Wuhan 430074, PR China. Electronic address: tangheqing@mail.scuec.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Heqing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tang
keywords: Charged aerosol detector; High performance liquid chromatography; Perfluorinated carboxylic acids; Wastewater