CEC for Studying the Retention and Separation of Pesticides on a Humic Acid Stationary Phase

A humic acid stationary phase is evaluated for studying by capillary electrochromatography (CEC) the binding of four pesticides with humic acid (HA), the main organic component in soil. It was demonstrated that the humic acid capillary was stable in terms of efficiency and retention during a long period of time. It appeared that HA has a lower affinity for neutral than for charged pesticides. The influence of the mobile phase constitution on the pesticide retention was also investigated in order to provide valuable information about the binding mechanism. The results suggest that the interactions of the pesticides during CEC are solely based on chromatographic mechanisms and that electrophoresis only plays a minor role. As well, it was shown that the HA stationary phase was able to separate these pesticides by CEC with a low analysis time. This HA capillary column could soon become attractive to determining the risk assessment of pesticides.