Direct synthesis of large-pore ethane-bridged mesoporous organosilica functionalized with carboxylic groups.

Carboxylic groups have been incorporated in ethane-bridged PMO by one-pot synthesis using a triblock copolymer as template; their pK(a) measured by titration is higher than that of same groups incorporated in SBA-15.

High performance ion chromatography of haloacetic acids on macrocyclic cryptand anion exchanger.

A new high performance ion chromatographic method has been developed for the separation of the nine chlorinated-brominated haloacetic acids (HAAs) that are the disinfection by-products of chlorination of drinking water, using a macrocycle-based adjustable-capacity anion-exchange separator column (IonPac Cryptand A1). A gradient method based on theoretical and experimental considerations has been optimized in which 10 mM NaOH-LiOH step gradient was performed at the third minute of the analysis. The optimized method allowed us to separate the nine HAAs and seven possibly interfering inorganic anions in less than 25 min with acceptable resolution. The minimum concentrations detectable for HAAs were between 8.0 (MBA) and 210 (TBA) microg L(-1), with linearity included between 0.9947 (TBA) and 0.9998 (MBA). To increase sensitivity, a 25-fold preconcentration step on a reversed phase substrate (LiChrolut EN) has been coupled. Application of this method to the analysis of haloacetic acids in real tap water samples is illustrated.

Determination of epichlorohydrin by sulfite derivatization and ion chromatography: characterization of the sulfite derivatives by ion chromatography-mass spectrometry.

This work is an upgrade of a previously developed method (J. Chromatogr. A 884 (2000) 251] for epichlorohydrin determination by ion chromatography (IC) and conductivity detection. Here, an ion chromatography-mass spectrometry (IC-MS) coupling has been employed for the separation and the identification of products of epichlorohydrin when reacted with the nucleophilic agent SO3(2-). The high capacity column (IonPac AS11-HC) used for separation provided good resolution. This allowed evaluation of the IC behavior and mass spectrometric identification of epichlorohydrin sulfite derivatives. By using atmospheric pressure interfaces (ESI and APCI) the following species were tentatively identified: 2,3-dihydroxy-1-propanesulfonic, 2,3-epoxy-1-propanesulfonic,1,3-dihydroxy-2-propanesulfonic and 3-oxetanesulfonic acids and 2-hydroxy-1,3-propanedisulfonic acid (or its isomer 3-hydroxy-1,2-propanedisulfonic acid). The study showed that chlorine atoms are displaced from epichlorohydrin during the reaction, while mass spectrometry confirmed that none of the products formed contains chlorine atoms.