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The development of an automated monitoring system for the determination of pesticides and their conversion products at trace level in the water environment

Objective

This project aims at the construction of an automated monitoring system for the determination of medium to polar pesticides and their conversion products at 0,1 to 10 mlg/l.


This analytical chemical instrument includes (i) sampling, (ii) sample clean-up and preconcentration, (iii) separation and detection. The current state of the art allows the realization of each individual part of the process. Sample preparation is carried out by solid phase extraction, separation and detection of modern polar pesticides are carried out by Liquid Chromatography - Ultra Violet Diode Array Detection (LCDAD). The analysis of metabolites in the water environment or the degradation products originating from water treatment processes is carried out by LC coupled to Mass Spectrometry (MS) or LC/LC. The analysis of medium polar pesticides is often conducted by capillary Gas Chromatography (GC), because of its high separation power and the disposal of appropriate detectors as NPD and ECD. Furthermore, mass spectrometry coupled to GC is routinely used because of its tremendous confirmatory power.

It is intended to combine the LC/DAD and the GC/MS techniques in one process, as an on-line system that can be fully automated and can be run unattendedly. This implies that the hardware of the individual modules has to be made compatible. The software for the central controlling unit has to be developed. The automation can be extended with a data communication device, which allows stand-alone operation at a river station. Such a system will be validated in situ. This requires calibration and precision measurements, and correlation with conventional techniques, in order to determine the accuracy of the system.

At the same time, analytical methods will be developed for the determination of degradation products and metabolites of relevant pesticides. Precedingly, the structure of these products has to be determined by fate and conversion studies.

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
EU contribution
No data
Address
1083,De Boelelaan
1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands

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Total cost
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Participants (3)