Precolumn Derivatization High-Performance Liquid Chromatography for Determination of Perfluorocarboxylic Acids in Catalytic Degradation Solutions

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 (C4-9) 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.