Determination of sulfur oxyanions by ion chromatography on a silica ODS column with tetrapropylammonium salt as an ion-pairing reagent

The difficulty in using conventional ion chromatography for the determination of sulfate, thiosulfate, dithionate and polythionates (tri-, tetra-, penta- and hexathionate) in their mixtures, comes mainly from very late elutions of polythionates due to their strong retentions onto a separating column. Rapid and sensitive determination of these sulfur oxyanions has been achieved by ion-pair chromatography using a silica octadecylsilane (ODS) column with mobile phases of 10% or 20% (v/v) acetonitrile in water (pH, 5.0) containing 0.2 mM phthalate and 7 mM tetrapropylammonium salt (TPAOH). The sulfur species separated on the column were monitored with a conductivity detector after passing through a micro membrane suppressor in the H+ form. When an acetonitrile-water (10:90, v/v) mobile phase (pH, 5.0) of 0.2 mM phthalate and 7 mM TPAOH was used at a flow-rate of 0.8 mi min(-1), sulfate, thiosulfate, dithionate and trithionate were eluted at short retention times of 9.1, 9.7, 11.4 and 15.8 min, respectively; however, the higher polythionates required more than 30 min to elute. When the concentration of acetonitrile in the mobile phase was raised to 20% (v/v), all polythionates of tri- to hexathionate were completely separated from their mixtures within 21 min; in this instance,both sulfate and thiosulfate failed to be resolved due to their close retention times. Good recoveries were obtained for these sulfur oxyanions when added to various hot-spring water samples.