Determination of three isothiazolinone biocides in water-borne adhesives by high performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

A rapid high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for the quantitative analysis of three isothiazolinone biocides (2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (MI), 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (CMI) and 1, 2-benzylisothiazolin-3-one (BIT)) in water-borne adhesives. The sample was extracted with methanol-water (1:1, v/v), and purified by centrifugation and filtration. The isothiazolones were separated on a C18 column with methanol-water as mobile phases under gradient elution and detected with a diode array detector (DAD). The pretreatment factors such as extraction solvent, extraction method, dilution ratio, extraction time were optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the targets had good linearities (r2H > or = 0.9992) in the range of 0.25-10.0 mg/L. The recoveries were between 92% and 103% with the relative standard deviations not more than 4%. The limits of detection (LODs) were between 0.43 mg/kg and 1.14 mg/kg. The limits of quantification (LOQs) were between 1.44 mg/kg and 3.81 mg/kg. The results showed that the method can achieve the purpose of quantitative detection. The analyses of real samples verified the reliability of this method.