Effective separation and sensitive determination of cyanuric acid, melamine and cyromazine in environmental water by reversed phase high‐performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

A new method for the simultaneous determination of cyanuric acid (CA), melamine (MM) and cyromazine (CM) in different water samples was developed by using reversed phase high‐performance liquid chromatography diode‐array detection (RP‐HPLC‐DAD). The conditions of HPLC were investigated and optimized. A KROMASIL® C₁₈ column (250 × 4.6 mm ID, 5 µm) was used for the RP‐HPLC using gradient elution with a mobile phase composed of 0.1 mM KH₂PO₄‐K₂HPO₄ buffer solution (pH = 7.3) and methanol (75:25, v/v). The conditions for HPLC were investigated and optimized. Under optimal conditions, the linearity was satisfactory in the range of 0.04–10.00 µg/mL with a correlation coefficient of 0.999, and the method limits of detection (LODs) of the proposed method were 0.02 µg/mL for CA and CM, and 0.01 µg/mL for MM. The recoveries were: 96.0–116.0% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.9–5.7% for CA, 94.3–115.0% with RSDs of 1.5–5.3% for MM, and 91.0–112.0% with RSDs (n = 6) of 1.0–4.9% for CM. The proposed method can permit the detection of CA and CM at levels as low as 0.07 µg/mL and MM at levels as low as 0.03 µg/mL in environmental water samples.

Keywords:

• high‐performance liquid chromatography
• cyanuric acid
• melamine
• cyromazine
• environmental water

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Science Foundation Education Office of Hebei Province (B2008000583).