Development of method for the determination of HAA5 in Drinking water by in-situ acidic methanol esterification and GC–MS analysis

Abstract

Disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water are formed when natural organic matter (NOM) that remains after initial treatment reacts with disinfectants, such as chlorine or chloramines. Haloacetic acids (HAA) are of health concern organic pollutants that can be formed as DBPs of water by chlorination. In this study, the use of acidic methanol esterification followed by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS) was approved for the determination of the five haloacetic acids (HAA₅) in water. The main advantage of this method is the use of acidic methanol as the derivatization agent as an alternative of the dangerous diazomethane. The mean percent recovery of HAA₅ derivatization was about 87%. The detection of limits (LOD) of the method is low than 0.1 mg.L^-1. The proposed method has good repeatability; precision was calculated as relative standard deviation RSD% of 7.8–10.5. The proposed method can be used for the determination of HAA₅ in drinking water.