Highly selective and efficient determination of US Environmental Protection Agency priority phenols employing solid-phase extraction and non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis

Non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis has been used in the separation of a complete list of 26 priority phenols included in the 8041 US Environmental Protection Agency method and the 76/464/EEC European Union directive. A highly selective and efficient separation was obtained when the background electrolyte used was 150 mM ammonium acetate dissolved in N-methylformamide–acetonitrile (75:25). Solid-phase extraction was successfully assayed as an enrichment strategy for the analysis of low-concentration samples. A styrene–divinylbenzene functionalized cartridge provided excellent recoveries of phenols from water samples at neutral pH. The limits of quantification obtained permit the application of the proposed method to the determination of priority phenols in wastewater samples.