Matrix effects in the determination of bromate in drinking water by ion chromatography

Bromate is a well known by-product produced by the ozonation of drinking water; the allowed concentration for human consumption has to be regulated to low microgram l-1 range. By using a high-capacity anion-exchange column, it should be possible to determine bromate at this low concentration by direct injection of a very large volume (up to 1 ml) without any sample preconcentration and pretreatment. The feasibility of this technique for the determination of bromate in drinking water has been explored in our work. The experimental results showed that matrix effect, due to inorganic ions contained in drinking water, strongly influenced the chromatographic behaviour of the bromate peak. The increase of the total ion content led to a correlated decrease in the efficiency of the analyte peak so that effective detection limits depended on the matrix composition. In this work chromatographic parameters (efficiency, asymmetry and resolution) of bromate peak are discussed in relation to the concentration of the main inorganic anions, and the injection volume (from 250 microliters to 1 ml).