Determination of haloacetic acids in hospital effluent after chlorination by ion chromatography

The ion chromatography combined solid phase extraction (SPE) method was developed for the analysis of low concentration haloacetic acids (HAAs), a class of disinfection by-products formed from chlorination of hospital wastewater. The monitored HAAs included monochloroacetic acid, monobromoacetic acid, dichloroacetic acid, dibromoacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid. The method employed a sodium hydroxide eluent at a flow rate of 0.8 ml/min, electrolytically generated gradients, and suppressed conductivity detection. To analyze the HAAs in real hospital wastewater samples, C18 pretreatment cartridge was utilized to reduce samples' turbidity. Preconcentration with SPE and matrix elimination with treatment cartridges were investigated and found to be able to obtain acceptable detection limits. Linearity, repeatability and detection limits of the above method were evaluated. The detection limits of monobromoacetic acid and dibromoacetic acid were 2.61 microg/L and 1.30 microg/L, respectively, and the other three acids are ranging from 0.48 to 0.82 microg/L under 25-fold preconcentration. When the above optimization procedure was applied to three hospital wastewater samples with different treatment processes in Tianjin, it was found that the dichloroacetic acid was the major compound, and the growth ratios of the HAAs after disinfection by sodium hypochlorite were 91.28%, 63.61% and 79.50%, respectively.