Towards in field miniaturized liquid chromatography: Biocides in wastewater as a proof of concept

Abstract

[EN] Solving and/or evaluating given problems or decision making in place and in real time is a goal of the an- alytical chemistry science. In this context, the performance of a commercial portable miniaturized liquid chromatograph (minLC) with LED UV (255 nm) detector was compared with those provided by two lab minLCs (capillary and nano) coupled on-line to in-valve in-tube solid phase microextraction (IT-SPME) with diode array detector (DAD). In addition, responses of the portable LC for in-field analysis in sev- eral conditions were tested. Besides, two evaluation tools, BETTER criteria for portability and HEXAGON pictogram for sustainability and greenness were applied for comparison purposes. The benchtop LCs pro- vided lower limits of detection (LODs) as expected, in the order of low μg/L, than those achieved by the portable LC, with LODs around mg/L for compounds covering several polarities (logKow between -1.72 and 3.82). The used portable LC gave excellent resolution, reducing the analysis time and being the consumption of solvents negligible. As a practical application, fruit washing residual waters, which contained a suitable level of concentrations of several biocides for employing the portable minLC, were analyzed and quantified from the three minLCs as a proof of concept with comparable results.