Abstract
This paper describes a novel high‐performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the determination of aromatic compounds with peroxyoxalate chemiluminescence (PO–CL ) detection following on‐line UV irradiation. Aromatic compounds were UV irradiated (254 nm, 15 W) to generate hydrogen peroxide, which was determined via PO–CL detection using a mixture of bis(2,4,6‐trichlorophenyl)oxalate (aryloxalate) and 2,4,6,8‐tetrathiomorpholinopyrimido[5,4‐d]pyrimidine (fluorophore) as a post‐column CL reagent. Generation of hydrogen peroxide from aromatic compounds was confirmed using a flow injection analysis (FIA) system incorporating an enzyme column reactor immobilized with catalase. The conditions for UV irradiation were optimized using benzene and monosubstituted benzenes (phenol, benzaldehyde, nitrobenzene and N,__N‐__dimethylaniline) by an HPLC system to evaluate the analytical performance of the proposed system. The detection limits for benzene and monosubstituted benzenes were in the range 2.1–124 pmol/injection at signal:noise (S:N) ratio = 3. Monocyclic and polycyclic hydrocarbons were also employed to investigate their CL properties. The possibility of PO–CL detection for a wide variety of aromatic compounds was shown for the first time. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.