Abstract

Analysis of pollution is extremely important especially in areas directly adjacent tothe residential district. Studies show that short- chain carboxylic acids are a group ofcompounds widespread around sewage treatment plants, landfills, livestock farms. The mostcommon techniques for determination of short - chain carboxylic acids are chromatographictechniques, especially gas chromatography, whose main limitation is that only volatilemonocarboxylic acids can be determined in an original form. Simultaneous determination ofmonocarboxylic acids, dicarboxylic acids or hydroxylic acids requires the application of liquidchromatography or capillary electrophoresis (CE). Due to low consumption of reagents andsolvents and small samples, the latter seems a method of choice to separate and then quantitatea measure compounds, for example, of oxalic, formic, fumaric, aconic, succinic, malic,glutaric, citric, glycollic, propionic, butyric, valeric, caproic and quinic acids. Capillaryelectrophoresis can be regarded as a green analytical technique The sample pretreatment isusually limited to coagulation and/or filtration.A typical detection system used in CE is a UV-Vis absorption spectrometer, which is of ratherlow sensitivity especially that the samples injected are generally small and light path short. Inspite of this, many analytical tasks can be carried out with this simple and green separationtechnique. It is application in increasingly wide. It was apply, for example, to manure,rainwater, silage, wastewaters, food and beverages analysis.Research shows the CE techniques provides a quick, sensitive, economic and reliable methodto meet the need for determination of short - chain carboxylic acids in aqueous samples ofdifferent origin.

Author (1)