Determination of brominated flame retardants in electrical and electronic equipment by micro-sample pretreatment technique combined with ion chromatography

A method for the determination of brominated flame retardants was established by micro sample pretreatment technology combined with ion chromatography. Using a sealed glass capillary as a micro reactor, the brominated flame retardants were debrominated by pyrolysis at 300 ℃ and absorbed by absorbing liquid, followed by ion chromatography determination. To improve the debromination efficiency, important factors including pyrolysis time and absorbing liquid were investigated. The linearity of the method was satisfactory over a Br − concentration of 0.05–100 mg/L and the determination coefficient was greater than 0.999. The limit of detection and limit of quantitation of bromide ion were 1.50 μg/L and 5.00 μg/L, respectively. The potential of the established method was assessed by applying it to the determination of total bromine in actual electrical and electronic equipment. The average recoveries (97.1–104.2 %) and the precision (3.1–7.5 %) were achieved by real samples spiked with three levels. This proposed method, with simple operation and low cost, could be a good supplementary for the oxygen bomb combustion-ion chromatography method for the determination of brominated flame retardants in electrical and electronic products.