Capillary electrophoretic separation of sulphonated anthraquinones in a variety of matrices

Sulphonated anthroquinones are resistant to biodegradation and are, therefore, not eliminated by traditional wastewater treatment plants; this leads to their accumulation in fresh water. To develop new technologies, e.g. phytoremediation, for treatment of such pollutants, a powerful technique is needed for their rapid and inexpensive detection and quantification in any kind of sample. For this purpose capillary electrophoresis seems to be a very promising technique. An efficient, rapid, and inexpensive method has been developed for analysis of five sulphonated anthraquinones, in the 50 - 950 muM range, with a simple borate buffer The procedure has been shown to be efficient for all the samples tested, i.e. pure standard solutions, hydroponic media in which plants, bacteria, and algae had grown for 6 weeks, and even plant extracts. This last result is consistent with the idea that phytoremediation could be used as an alternative means of wastewater treatment for these recalcitrant compounds.