SEDL / STP / STP686-EB / STP35015S

Survey Analysis of Phenolic Compounds in Industrial Effluents by Gas Chromatography—Mass Spectrometry

Shackelford, WM
Research chemists, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Athens Environmental Research Laboratory, Athens, Ga

Webb, RG
Research chemists, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Athens Environmental Research Laboratory, Athens, Ga

Pages: 15    Published: Jan 1979

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Abstract

Analyzing industrial effluents for phenolic compounds involves a number of problems both in the separation of these compounds from the aqueous medium and in the chromatography of the extracted compounds. Use of a continuous liquid-liquid extractor improved the recovery of phenolic compounds from those effluents that formed intractable emulsions during liquid-liquid extraction by shake-out. Tenax GC and SP-124O DA proved to be the best general-purpose gas chromatographic column packings for a broad range of phenolic compounds. Derivatization procedures using diazomethane and pentafluorobenzyl bromide were found to be successful only under rigorously controlled conditions. For survey work, it appears that derivatization is of questionable value for initial qualitative analysis, because is many cases, the character of the matrix is not known.