Repositori URV

Identifier: TDX:768

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX768

Authors:
Gimeno Ferreres, Rosa Ana

Abstract:
The aim of this thesis has been the development of analytical methods for the determination of some groups of organic contaminants in coastal water and sediment samples.These methods were based on the coupling of high-performance liquid chromatography to different detection techniques, such as fluorescence detection or mass-spectrometry, as well as the on-line and off-line coupling to different extraction techniques.As detectors, the developed methods used UV-visible detector, since it is commonly used. However, due to the low concentration levels to be achieved when real environmental samples are analysed, more sensitive detectors, such as fluorescence detector or mass spectrometry, are preferred. So these detectors have been used for the determination of some of the families of compounds studied in this thesis. As regards to coupling mass spectrometry to high-performance liquid chromatography, the atmospheric-pressure chemical ionization interface has been chosen because of the ionization characteristics of the studied compounds.Referring to the extraction techniques, solid-phase extraction has been chosen for the analysis of aqueous samples. This technique has been coupled on-line and off-line to the high-performance liquid chromatography. Taking into account the characteristics of the compounds, different polymeric sorbents have been used. In this way, PLRP-s, a styrene-divinylbenzene copolymer, has been used for the determination of polycyclic aromatic compounds. But due to the development of the highly-crosslinked polymeric sorbents, which present a greater retention of the most polar compounds, and taking into account the good results obtained for the extraction of other organic contaminants for other kinds of aqueous samples, these kind of sorbents was also used