Because of their specific physical and chemical properties (amphiphilicity, solubility in polar and nonpolar liquids, ability to form micelles, adsorption at phase boundaries, low toxicity) surfactants (surface-active compounds) are widely applied in industry and in the household. As their applications are on a very large scale, it has become necessary to acquire a more detailed understanding of their environmental fate.In the methodologies for analysing environmental samples, the isolation and/or preconcentration of analytes constitutes an important step. The usual techniques are liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), solid-phase extraction (SPE - also used for extract clean-up following analytes isolation by another technique) or accelerated solvent extraction (ASE).For the analysis of samples/extracts, depending on whether information is required - the total concentration or the levels of particular surface-active compounds in environmental samples - spectrophotometry, tensammetry or electrophoresis, and chromatography may be used. Nowadays, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is usually coupled with a universal mass spectrometry detector (MS) (or tandem mass spectrometry detector MS-MS), what allows for detection, identification and quantification the various compounds in a particular group of surfactants in suitably prepared solvent extracts.
Authors
Additional information
- DOI
- Digital Object Identifier link open in new tab 10.1016/j.talanta.2011.10.034
- Category
- Publikacja w czasopiśmie
- Type
- artykuł w czasopiśmie wyróżnionym w JCR
- Language
- angielski
- Publication year
- 2012
