Capillary electrophoresis in the analysis of pharmaceuticals in environmental water: A critical review

Determination of residual pharmaceutical compounds in environmental water is gaining increasing interests. The task represents a substantial challenge to analysts because analytes present in quite complicated matrices and at very low concentrations. Despite the inherent low sensitivity associated with capillary electrophoresis (CE), it has been used successfully to determine different types of pharmaceutical compounds at very low levels that rival those reported by more commonly used methods for that purpose such as high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Attempts to use CE for the determination of drugs in environmental water samples started nearly in the late 1990s; since then, different modes of CE including capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) and micellar electrokinetic chromatography together with different detection techniques (UV, fluorescence, MS) have been investigated and shown to be of adequate performance. A key to the success of CE for such low-level determination was the sample concentration steps that have been used including solid-phase extraction and more advanced approaches such as in-line sample concentration, large volume sample stacking, and others. The different reports that have been reported for this application in particular have been reviewed since late 1990s with emphasis on the attained limits of detections and sample treatment. The particularities of the separation conditions in each case have been discussed with some elaboration.