Simultaneous Determination of Mixtures of Nitrite and Nitrate by Reversed‐Phase Ion‐Pair Liquid Chromatography

To overcome the relatively low resolution in the separation and quantitative analysis of mixtures of nitrite and nitrate, a reversed‐phase ion‐pair liquid chromatographic method is developed with advantages of high accuracy, good selectivity, high efficiency, and low cost. By employing cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the ion‐pair reagent, this method can work excellently in situations where one component in the mixture is highly in excess (e.g., molar ratio of n( NO₂⁻):n(NO₃⁻) ranging from 1:99 to 95:5). The operation parameters were optimized on a Shim‐pack VP‐ODS(150 L × 4.6) analytical column using a methanol/water ratio of 50:50 (v/v) mobile phase containing 7.0 mmol/L CTAB and 3.1 mmol/L potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KH₂PO₄).The column works at a temperature of 35 °C with a flow rate of 1.5 mL/min. Such a protocol can be applied to monitor the formation of trace nitrous acid during the oxidative decomposition of nitric acid.