SEPARATION, IDENTIFICATION AND DETERMINATION OF ALKYLPHENOL AND ALKYLPHENOL ETHER CARBOXYLATES BY HPLC

A method is described which allows the separation, identification and determination of alkyl- and alkyl-phenol ether carboxylates even in mixtures with other anionic, non-ionic or amphoteric surfactants in one step. The separation is carried out by HPLC using a reversed phase RP 18 column and a mixture of methanol, water and acetonitrile with addition of ion pairing reagent as mobile phase working under isocratic conditions. For the detection and quantitative determination a differential refractometer can generally be used. The detection limit is about 10 μg/ml. If only alkylphenol ether carboxylates are to be determined an UV-spectrophotometer can also be used by which the detection limit is lowered with a factor 100 to about 0.1 μg/ml. © 1990 Springer-Verlag.