Abstract: A method was developed for the determination of residual monomers in polymer water treatment chemicals (sodium of polyepoxysuccinic acid （PESA）, acrylic acid/maleic anhydride copolymer （AA/MA）, polyacrylic acid （PAA）, sodium of hydrolyzed polymaleic acid （HPMA）, and maleic anhydride/acrylic acid/methyl acrylate copolymer(MA/AA/MAc) using high performance liquid chromatography. The separation was performed on a ZORBAX 300SB-C18 column (5 μm, 150 mm×4.6 mm). The mobile phase was 0.01 mol/L KH2PO4 (pH 2.3, adjusted by 5%H3PO4)-methanol (95∶5, v/v) with a flow rate of 0.6 mL/min. The detection wavelength was set at 210 nm and the column temperature was 30 ℃. The sample was diluted by the mobile phase and filtrated for analysis. The residual monomers of maleic acid, fumaric acid and acrylic acid were completely separated and determined in 10 min, and the limits of detection were 0.5, 0.5, and 0.2 mg/L, respectively. The average recoveries were 98.9%-103.7% with the relative standard deviations of 1.09%-1.69%. The correlation coefficients for the linear equations were 0.9996-0.9999. These results demonstrate that the proposed method is simple, sensitive and reliable for the determination of the residual monomers in five polymer water treatment chemicals.

Key words: acrylic acid, fumaric acid, maleic acid, polymer water treatment chemicals , residual monomers, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)