Continuous, on-line monitoring of haloacetic acids via membrane extraction

Haloacetic acids are an important class of disinfection byproducts that are being regulated. In this paper we report novel instrumentation for continuous monitoring of the nine haloacetic acids. Hollow fiber liquid-liquid membrane extraction (LLME) and supported liquid membrane extraction (SLME) followed by on-line HPLC-UV detection were studied. With continuous LLME, seven halo-acetic acids could be analyzed and enrichment factor (EF) was around 50. All the nine acids could be extracted and quantified by continuous SLME. Experiments with laboratory standards demonstrated that EF and extraction efficiency could be as high as 500 and 54%, respectively. Relative standard deviations based on seven replicates were between 3.3 and 10.3%, and the MDLs were at sub-ppb levels.