Determination of Total Organic Fluorine (TOF) in environmental samples
using flow-injection and chromatographic methods
Marek Trojanowicz, Lena Wójcik, Jacek Musijowski, Mariusz Koc, and Magdalena Donten
Department of Chemistry, University of Warsaw, Pastura 1, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
trojan@chem.uw.edu.pl
Widespread presence of perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) in the environment requires
reliable and possibly inexpensive methods for their determination. The most commonly used
methods for determination of PFCAs are based on HPLC combined with mass spectrometry
detection, employed both for environmental and biological samples. These methods require
expensive instrumentation and highly trained personnel. As alternative, we have developed
capillary electrophoresis (CE) methods with direct and indirect UV detections. Some preliminary
studies on development of capillary electrophoresis microfluidic chip with conductivity detection for
determination of PFCAs have been also carried out.
Total Organic Fluorine (TOF) is a set of information necessary to carry out mass balance study, a
useful tool for assessing completeness of determination with respect to fluoroorganic compounds.
Determination of TOF can be carried out incorporating different methods, including e.g. chemical
defluorination with sodium biphenyl reagent (SBP) to convert fluoroorganic compounds to inorganic
fluoride, followed by quantitation of resulting fluoride. Fluoride determination can be carried out
using various instrumental methods, including e.g. flow-injection analysis with potentiometric or
fluorimetric detections.
In order to reach environmental concentration levels of fluorinated compounds in natural samples a
preconcentration step is necessary. Complete procedure of analytical method for TOF determination
consists of preconcentration of perfluorinated substances from a large sample volume using solidphase extraction, defluorination with SBP after extraction of analytes from the sorbent and solvent
evaporation, derivatization of obtained fluoride with triphenylsilanol, and finally reversed-phase
HPLC or GC quantitation of the reaction product triphenylfluorosilane. Results of TOF
determination compared with LC/MS analysis will be shown fort different environmental samples.
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