Determination of trace amounts of aluminum in drinking water by reversed-phase ion-pair HPLC with spectrophotometric detection

A reversed-phase ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of trace amounts of aluminum was developed using 5-sulfo-8-quinolinol as a pre-column derivatization reagent for spectrophotometric detection. All of the experiments were carried out in a class-100 clean room to avoid the contamination of aluminum from the laboratory environment. The calibration curve of aluminum standard solutions was linear over the range of 0.5-100 ppb with a correlation coefficient of 0.997 and relative standard deviations of 0.49-1.65%. The limit of detection, defined as three-times the standard deviation of the blank signal, was found to be 0.05 ppb. This method was successfully applied to the determination of trace levels of aluminum in several commercial drinking water and tap water samples.