Yang Liping, Sun Binbin, Cui Haochen, Zhu Lingyan, Shan Guoqiang
Key Laboratory of Pollution Processes and Environmental Criteria (Ministry of Education), Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environmental Remediation and Pollution Control, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China.
Int J Anal Chem. 2022 May 19;2022:3482759. doi: 10.1155/2022/3482759. eCollection 2022.
Perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs), a series of ubiquitous contaminants in the global environment, attracted much attention due to their potential for high bioaccumulation and toxicity to various organisms. There are a lot of measurement requests in currently increasing degradation studies of PFCAs, which usually rely on expensive liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The degradation solutions containing high-concentration PFCAs can easily cause the pipeline pollution of the LC/MS instrument, which is usually used for trace analysis of environmental samples. In this study, a simple and reliable precolumn derivatization LC method coupled with an ultraviolet detector (UV) was developed for the determination of the main PFCAs (C) of environmental concern. These PFCAs in degradation solutions were crosslinked to UV-responsive 3, 4-diphenylamine (DCA) by a carbodiimidization method, followed by a simple solid-phase extraction (SPE) cleanup, and quantitatively measured using a conventional LC-UV instrument. Compared to previously reported precolumn derivatization methods, this new derivatization approach has the advantages such as mild reaction conditions, easy operation, enhanced stability of derivatives, and low cost. The instrumental limits of detection (ILDs) for the targeted PFCAs in organic and aqueous mediums were 0.2-0.5 and 0.6-1.5 mg/L, respectively. The method has been successfully applied to the determination of PFCAs in catalytic degradation solutions and recommended for use in other assays involving relatively high-concentration PFCAs.
全氟烷基羧酸（PFCA）是全球环境中普遍存在的一类污染物，因其具有高生物累积性以及对多种生物的毒性而备受关注。在当前日益增多的PFCA降解研究中存在大量测量需求，这些研究通常依赖昂贵的液相色谱 - 质谱联用仪（LC - MS）。含有高浓度PFCA的降解溶液很容易导致常用于环境样品痕量分析的LC/MS仪器的管路污染。在本研究中，开发了一种简单可靠的柱前衍生化液相色谱法并结合紫外检测器（UV），用于测定环境中备受关注的主要PFCA（C）。降解溶液中的这些PFCA通过碳二亚胺化方法与对紫外有响应的3,4 - 二苯胺（DCA）交联，随后进行简单的固相萃取（SPE）净化，然后使用常规的LC - UV仪器进行定量测定。与先前报道的柱前衍生化方法相比，这种新的衍生化方法具有反应条件温和、操作简便、衍生物稳定性增强以及成本低等优点。目标PFCA在有机和水介质中的仪器检测限（ILD）分别为0.2 - 0.5和0.6 - 1.5mg/L。该方法已成功应用于催化降解溶液中PFCA的测定，并推荐用于其他涉及相对高浓度PFCA的分析。
