Environmental monitoring of phenolic pollutants in water by cloud point extraction prior to micellar electrokinetic chromatography

PATRICIA W. STEGE; LORENA L. SOMBRA; GERMÁN A. MESSINA; LUIS D. MARTINEZ; MARÍA F. SILVA

ANALYTICAL AND BIOANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY

Springer

Año: 2009 vol. 394 p. 567 - 573

1618-2642

Abstract Many aromatic compounds can be found in the environment as a result of anthropogenic activities and some of them are highly toxic. The need to determine low concentrations of pollutants requires analytical methods with high sensitivity, selectivity and resolution for application to soil, sediment, water and other environmental samples. Complex sample preparation involving analyte isolation and enrichment is generally necessary before the final analysis. The present paper outlines a novel, simple, low cost, and environmentally friendly method for the simultaneous determination of p-nitrophenol (PNP), p-aminophenol (PAP) and hydroquinone (HQ) by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MEKC) after preconcentration by cloud point extraction (CPE). Enrichment factors of 180 to 200 were achieved. The LODs of the analytes for the preconcentration of 50 ml sample volume were 0.10 μg L-1 for PNP, 0.20 μg L-1 for PAP, and 0.16 μg L-1 for HQ. The optimized procedure was applied to the determination of phenolic pollutants in natural waters from San Luis, Argentina.