Published:Journal of Chromatographic Science,
ISSN 0021-9665Volume
40, Number 3, March 2002, pp. 162-169
Use of Nonionic Poly(Ethylene glycol) p-Isooctyl-Phenyl Ether
(Triton X-100) Surfactant Mobile Phases in the Thin-Layer Chromatography of
Heavy-Metal Cations
Ali Mohammad, Eram Iraqi, and Iftkhar Alam Khan
Analytical Research Laboratory, Department of Applied Chemistry, Z.H. College
of Engineering & Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202002,
India
The analytical potential of poly(ethylene glycol) p-isooctyl-phenyl
ether (Triton X-100), a nonionic surfactant, is used as a mobile phase in the
thin-layer chromatographic separation of heavy-metal cations. The surfactant
concentration below its critical micellar concentration (CMC) as well as above
the CMC value is used to investigate the migrational behavior of some heavy-metal
ions on silica gel layers. The mobility of the metal ions is found to change
marginally with the increase of surfactant concentration from 0.001M (below
CMC) to 0.1M (above CMC). The influence of the pH of the medium, nonelectrolyte
organic (urea and alkanols), and inorganic electrolyte (NaCl) additives in the
surfactant containing mobile phase on the mobility of heavy metals on the silica
gel layer is examined. For separating metal ions, surfactant must be used in
the presence of buffers. Triton X-100 (0.02M) at pH 2.3 is found to be the best
mobile phase for the separation of heavy-metal cations. In general, the presence
of alcohol in aqueous surfactant solutions results in a decrease in the mobility
of metal ions. Besides Cu2+ and Fe3+, all of the metal ions show a trend of
increasing the retardation factor beyond a minima at 0.1 or 0.3M of added urea
or NaCl. The proposed method is successfully applied for the simultaneous detection
of Zn2+ and Cd2+ from a spiked human blood sample.
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