Novel computer-assisted separation prediction strategy for online-enrichment-HPLC-FLD in simultaneous monitoring of bisphenols in children’s water bottles

An on-line enrichment-liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection (LC-FD) method was developed for simultaneous determination of nine bisphenols (BPs). In this process, we predicted the separation based on an in-house developed software allowing for calculating both retention time ( t R ) and half-peak width ( W 1/2 ) of the solute by mobile phase fraction ( φ ) under gradient conditions. The proposed strategy was applied to separation prediction of BPs with high accuracy. Under the optimized conditions, good linearity was obtained with the correlation coefficients ( R 2 ) ranging from 0.998 to 1.000. The recoveries in spiked samples were 91.3–110.7% with the intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviation ranging 0.4–9.6% and 0.5–10.2%, respectively. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.13–66.7 ng L −1 and 0.40–200 ng L −1 . The developed approach was used to monitor the nine BPs in 28 children’s water bottles. The developed method provides an effective way for monitoring bisphenols in other similar matrix.