A. Marcomini et al., DETERMINATION OF NONIONIC ALIPHATIC AND AROMATIC POLYETHOXYLATED SURFACTANTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL AQUEOUS SAMPLES, Analusis, 26(2), 1998, pp. 64-69
Nonionic surfactants of the polyethoxylate types me environmentally re
levant because of their ubiquitous presence in raw and treated, munici
pal and industrial, wastewaters. Until today the standard methods curr
ently used for the routine determination of nonionic surfactants in en
vironmental matrices are cumulative methods (BIAS, CTAS, PPAS, TAS), w
hich are poorly reliable. particularly in terms of accuracy, and do no
t supply and structural information on the ethoxymeric and homolog com
position, as well as on the chain length of the hydrophobic moiety. Th
is paper describes a specific analytical procedure for the simultaneou
s specific determination of polyethoxylate aliphatic (AE) and aromatic
(APE) nonionics in aqueous matrices. The analytes were isolated from
water samples by solid phase extraction with graphitized carbon black
and then derivatized with 1-naphthylisocyanate (NIC). AE and APE were
separated bu reversed-phase HPLC combined with fluorescence detection
(RP-HLPC/FL). The analytical procedure was applied to the monitoring o
f these two classes of surfactants in a municipal sewage treatment pla
nt. The method allows rapid, precise and reliable determination of AE
and APE in environmental samples at concentrations as low as 0.1 mu dL
.