THE ANALYSIS OF EDTA IN WATER BY HPLC

This paper describes the development of a method for determining ethyl enediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) in various types of water at low mu g/l concentrations by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A fter a short sample pretreatment the sample was analyzed using reverse d-phase ion-pair liquid chromatography. Ultraviolet absorbance detecti on was applied at 254 nm. The method is suitable for the determination of EDTA in surface water, bank filtrate, infiltrated water and drinki ng water. The method is simple and has a low limit of detection (0.8 m u g/l). In general, the method provides calibration curves with good r egression characteristics (correlation coefficient > 0.998). To determ ine the concentration of EDTA 31 samples from several Dutch water comp anies were analyzed.