Determination of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Product Components in Wastewater Using Capillary Electrophoresis Coupled with Solid Phase Extraction

Four pharmaceuticals and personal care product components including salbutamol sulfate, cimetidine, ibuprofen, and carbamazepine are difficult to separate by conventional high-performance liquid chromatography. In this work, a method using solid phase extraction sample preparation and capillary electrophoresis with ultraviolet detection was developed for the determination of these compounds in wastewater. Separation parameters were optimized, and under these conditions (20 mM phosphate solution at pH 6.70 as the running buffer, 10 mM phosphate with 20% v/v methanol as sample solvent), the analytes were well separated. This method showed good linearity from 3.0 to 20.0 mg/L, detection limits of 1.3 to 2.9 µg/L, and relative standard deviation values less than 5% for n = 7. Wastewater and local pond water were analyzed. The recoveries of the analytes in wastewater were between 89.7 and 108%. Carbamazepine was detected in the influent and effluent from the wastewater plant (329.30, 291.94 µg/L) and pond water (91.87 µg/L). The results demonstrated that the developed method may serve as alternative method for the determination of these compounds.