Spherical Clay Conglomerates:  A Novel Stationary Phase for Solid-Phase Extraction and “Reversed-Phase” Liquid Chromatography

A new solid phase is presented to be used for the solid-phase extraction (SPE) of organic compounds from aqueous solutions and as a stationary phase for the separation of organic compounds in “reversed-phase” HPLC. The material consists of spherical clay conglomerates (SCCs) in the size ranges of 2−5, 5−10, and 10−20 μm. SCCs are especially well suited for the extraction and separation of aromatic compounds with electron-withdrawing substituents, because of the formation of specific electron donor−acceptor (EDA) complexes of such compounds with natural clay minerals. A series of nitroaromatic compounds (NACs), e.g., nitrophenols, and nitrotoluenes, served as probe substances for the characterization of the SPE with SCCs online coupled to a C18-HPLC-DAD system. Breakthrough volumes were > 1 L and method detection limits (MDLs) < 100 ng/L for compounds with moderate to high affinity towards clay minerals. The performance of the material is hardly affected by matrix effects and because of its excellent physical properties, i.e., regenerability and pressure-resistance, it meets the requirements for fully automated routine trace analysis of several primary pollutants, such as 6-methyl-2,4-dinitrophenol (DNOC) or 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), in various natural waters. Offline SPE with SCCs was superior or equivalent to commercial SPE products for analysis of such compounds. Finally, SCCs are shown to be well suited as a stationary phase in reversed-phase HPLC. This opens a wide range of applications, e.g., as an easy and fast separation technique that is orthogonal to C18 reversed-phase HPLC.