DETERMINATION OF SECONDARY ALKANE SULFONATES IN SEWAGE WASTEWATERS BYSOLID-PHASE EXTRACTION AND INJECTION-PORT DERIVATIZATION GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY MASS-SPECTROMETRY
Ja. Field et al., DETERMINATION OF SECONDARY ALKANE SULFONATES IN SEWAGE WASTEWATERS BYSOLID-PHASE EXTRACTION AND INJECTION-PORT DERIVATIZATION GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY MASS-SPECTROMETRY, Environmental science & technology, 28(3), 1994, pp. 497-503
Secondary alkane sulfonate (SAS) surfactants were determined in aqueou
s samples from sewage treatment plants using solid-phase extraction (S
PE) and a single-step procedure that combines elution and injection-po
rt derivatization for sample analysis using gas chromatography/mass sp
ectrometry (GC/MS). A tetrabutylammonium ion pair reagent was applied
both to elute SAS from C,8 bonded-silica disks as their ion pairs and
to derivatize SAS ion pairs under GC injection-port conditions. SAS wa
s effectively recovered from samples of raw sewage (>92%) and from pri
mary (>98%) and secondary (>85%) sewage effluents. No sample cleanup s
teps were necessary because the identification and quantitation of SAS
isomers and homologs were performed using mass selective detection. T
he overall precision of the method, indicated by the relative deviatio
n, for SAS in raw sewage, primary effluent, and secondary effluents wa
s 7.1, 5.2, and 10.4 %, respectively. The concentration of SAS in muni
cipal wastewaters ranged from 0.69 to 0.98 mg/L in raw sewage, from 0.
54 to 0.89 mg/L in primary effluents, and from below detection to 0.02
mg/L in secondary effluents. Linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) conc
entrations also were determined in wastewater samples.