FAST DETERMINATION OF SULFATE BY ION CHROMATOGRAPHY BASED ON A PERMANENTLY COATED COLUMN

A method based on a permanently coated C-18 Column for the fast determ ination (<2 min) of sulfate at the picogram level using indirect UV (2 05 nm) detection is described. Potassium hexacyanoferrate(III) and 1,1 2-diaminododecane were used as eluent and coating reagent, respectivel y. Over a period of 6 d the day-to-day reproducibility, expressed as t he relative standard deviation for a 1.0 mg l(-1) sulfate standard, is +/-3.2% for the peak area and +/-1.7% for the retention time, Determi nations; of synthetic samples incorporating some inorganic ions and so me organic anions showed that sufficient resolution in the presence of excess amounts of common ions was achieved. The proposed method was a pplied to water analysis. The analytical results of 27 different water samples including tap, well, surface, waste and-mineral water were in good agreement with those obtained by the turbidimetric method. The p aired Student's t-test showed that there was no statistical difference in the results.