A new approach for the simultaneous determination of inorganic cations and anions using ion chromatography

A new approach for the simultaneous determination of inorganic cations and anions using ion chromatography was proposed. In this study, a zwitterionic stationary phase was employed with water as the eluent. With the ion separation achieved under these conditions, each anion species of the analytes could be separated from the others and eluted together with the analyte cations. The combination of the analyte anions with the analyte cations can be considered as an “ion-pairing-like” form and is briefly denoted as “ion pair”. If we determine all the ion pairs, the concentrations of the anions and the cations in the original solution can be calculated. This new approach for the simultaneous determination of inorganic cations and anions was investigated in this study.