Trace analysis of surfactants using chromatographic and electrophoretic techniques

Because of the widespread use, increased application of new formulations and immense impact on organisms and ecology surfactants are still in the focus of analytical chemistry. The development of methods with higher selectivity and lower detection limits is important to meet the requirements of greater responsibility for health of people and environment. Efficient separation methods, like HPLC, GC and CE, in combination with sensitive detection, like MS, are to be preferred over collective techniques which can suffer from interfering components. A review on trace analysis of ionic and neutral surfactants including sample preparation steps is presented, considering especially those methods which provide information about homologous and isomeric distribution of surfactant mixtures. Examples for the determination of linear alkylbenzene sulfonates in river water by HPLC and CE are discussed to show the capability of these methods for environmental analyses. As future trends increased applications of LC/MS (very high sensitivity) and also of CE (robustness and possibility for rapid method development) can be predicted.