Simple high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet method for simultaneous separation and detection of 14 bisphenol pollutants in building materials

A high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet method was developed for rapidly and simultaneously analyzing novel and typical bisphenols in building materials, including bisphenol S, diphenolic acid, bisphenol F, bisphenol E, bisphenol A, bisphenol B, bisphenol AF, bisphenol AP, bisphenol C, bisphenol FL, bisphenol Z, bisphenol BP, bisphenol M, and bisphenol P. By using a Kromasil 100–5 C18 column, these bisphenols were completely separated in 40 min via gradually increasing the concentration of methanol in the mobile phase from 45 to 80% during the elution process. In particular, this method achieved the synchronous analysis of bisphenol S, diphenolic acid, bisphenol FL, bisphenol BP, and bisphenol M through HPLC, which were difficult to separate and had to be identified and detected through mass spectrometry. The limits of detection of the method ranged from 0.002 to 0.040 mg/L for these 14 bisphenols, with a precision of less than 4.9% (n = 7, c = 0.05 mg/L). The analytical results for five types of building materials (phenolic, epoxy, polycarbonate, polyester, and polysulfone resins) indicated that the proposed method is appropriated for the rapid measurement of bisphenols in real samples.