Determination of phenols in environmental waters using liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection

Abstract

The development of a liquid chromatographic method for the determination of priority pollutant phenols at low μg/l levels in environmental waters is discussed. The phenols were separated using a Nova-Pak Phenyl column with concave gradient elution from 20 mM ammonium acetate (19% acetonitrile) to 20 mM ammonium acetate (54% acetonitrile) over 12 min, and subsequently detected using an electrochemical detector equipped with a glassy carbon working electrode, operated at a potential of +1150 mV. This approach resulted in minimal sample interferences and practical quantitation limits in the low μg/l range. The LC-ED method offers a distinct advantage over the established GC and GC-MS phenol methods in that no sample extraction is required, hence avoiding the losses which occur during the extraction, concentration and solvent exchange steps required for the GC-based analyses.