QUANTITATION OF ALCOHOL ETHOXYLATE SURFACTANTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL-SAMPLES BY ELECTROSPRAY MASS-SPECTROMETRY

This report describes a method for obtaining the concentrations of the total and individual alcohol ethoxylate (AE) species in sewage treatm ent plant (STP) effluents by using electrospray liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC/MS). This is a more advantageous method for quan titative analysis of AE in environmental matrices as compared with a p revious thermospray LC/MS method. This new method is more sensitive, u ses less solvents, utilizes a deuterated internal standard blend [C13D 27O(CH2CH2O)(n)H, where n varies from 0 to 21 with an average of n = 9 ], which corresponds more closely to the AE, and it is a more robust i nstrumental technique. In this report, we document the results for val idation of the electrospray LC/MS method by spike recovery of AE from STP effluent and influent samples.