Abstract—Low molecular mass carboxylic acids (LCAs) occur in many environmental compartments due to natural processes and human activity. They are an important group of organic pollutants of waste water that mainly includes, volatile fatty acids, and also dicarboxylic, aromatic, hydroxy- and ketoacids. LCAs are present in the environment at concentrations between 1 to 5000 ppm and different methods have been reported for their determination [1]. When volatile and nonvolatile acids are to be monitored then liquid chromatography, including ion chromatography is the method of choice. At high pH the acids are in ionized form and can be separated as carboxylates by means of anion exchange chromatography. LCAs can also be separated at low pH by ion exclusion chromatography or by reverse phase chromatography. Using Dionex-3000 instrument with an Acclaim Organic Acid, OA column dedicated to separation of organic acids the method has been developed to identify selected LCAs. With this analytical tool formic, acetic, propionic, butyric and also citric, malonic, and oxalic acids were measured in waste water from swine and cattle livestock farms.
Index Terms—Environmental analysis, organic acids, anionchromatography, ion exclusion chromatography, reverse phasecolumn.
Marta Wasielewska and Bogdan Zygmunt are with the Department of Analytical Chemistry, Chemical Faculty, Gdansk University of Technology,80-233 Gdańsk, 11/12 Narutowicza Str (e-mail address:marta.chemanal@gmail.com).
Anna Banel is with Norwegian Institute for Air Research, 2027 Kjeller,Norwayz
Cite: Marta Wasielewska, Anna Banel, and Bogdan Zygmunt, "Determination of Selected Organic Acids in Animal Farm Water Samples by Ion Chromatography," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 178-181, 2012.