Determination of oxoanions in river water by capillary electrophoresis

A new capillary electrophoresis (CE) procedure was developed for simultaneous determination of ten oxoanions (CrO42−, SeO42−, MoO42−, WO42−, VO43−, SeO32−, AsO43−, TeO32−, TeO42−, and AsO33−) which were baseline‐separated from each other and from the interfering UV absorbing anions (NO3− and NO2−) commonly found in environmental water samples. The new background electrolyte system developed contained 5 mM potassium phosphate and 0.007 mM octadecyltrimethylammonium hydroxide, pH 11.2. The optimized working conditions were electrokinetic sampling at –5 kV for 10 s, running voltage at –15 kV with 5 νA current, and detection wavelength at 205 nm. No interference was observed for non‐UV‐absorbing anions and UV‐absorbing anions up to 20 and 10 times higher concentrations respectively. The speed of analysis was fast, with a complete CE run within 6 min. Wide linear ranges (1–2000 νg/L), good repeatability in migration time (relative standard deviation RSD 0.55–2.8%), satisfactory precision in peak area (RSD 3.8–5.6%) and peak height (RSD 3.9–5.3%) measurement, and detection limits (1–25 νg/L) sufficiently sensitive to detect oxoanions found in environmental water samples were obtained. The reliability of the CE procedure developed had been established by recovery test and parallel method determination using atomic absoprtion spectrophotometry for real river water sample.