- P-ISSN 1225-0163
- E-ISSN 2288-8985
A method is described for the analysis of short-chain alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEOs), 4-octylphenol-di-ethoxylate (OP2EO) and 4-nonylphenol-di-ethoxylate (NP2EO), in drinking water or wastewater using reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. The solvent system was water and methanol containing 10 M trifluoroacetic acid as an ionization solvent. We acidified 1 L of water samples to less than pH 2 with concentrated H2SO4 and loaded onto Sep-Pak C18, and eluted with acetone. The calibration of OP2EO and NP2EO was performed for the concentration range from 20 to 500 ng/L and the correlation coefficients were 0.999 and 0.990, respectively. The limits of detection were 20 ng/L (OP2EO) and 50 ng/L (NP2EO) at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3. Accuracy and precision of this analytical method were 85.8∼122.1% and 8.2∼18.8%, respectively. The proposed method allowed a sensitive and rapid detection of OP2EO and NP2EO and it could be applied for monitoring of APEOs from environmental samples.