Abstract:

A method for the determination of sultones in α-olefin sulfonate by high performance liquid chromatography （HPLC） was developed. This method was used to monitor the risk of 4 batches of α-olefin sulfonate samples on the market. The samples were dissolved in water and ethanol, and then extracted with petroleum ether. The extracts were dissolved in the mixed solution of n-hexane and isopropyl alcohol, and the equal degree elution was performed using n-hexane and isopropyl alcohol as the mobile phase by high performance liquid chromatography. The volume ratio of n-hexane to isopropyl alcohol was 8:2.The extracts were separated by Inertsil CN-3 column （250 mm×4.6 mm×5 µm） at the flow rate of 2.0 mL/min. The injection volume was 20 µL and the column temperature was 25 ℃. The detector was the evaporative light scattering detector. The temperature of the drift tube was 80 ℃, and the flow rate of carrier gas was 2.0 L/min. The quantitative method was external standard method. The results show that the mass concentration of sultones in the range of 80-200 μg/mL shows a good linear relationship, and the detection limit is 5.25 μg/mL with the correlation coefficient greater than 0.989. The relative standard deviation is 1.01% （n=6）. The recoveries of sultones are 102.82%-108.24%. The method has good separation effect, good linear relationship, simple operation, high sensitivity, and good accuracy and repeatability. The method can quickly and accurately measure the residual amount of sultones in α-olefin sulfonate.

Key words: high performance liquid chromatography, evaporative light scattering detector, α-olefin sulfonate, sultones