Determination of secondary alkane sulfonates in sewage wastewaters by solid-phase extraction and injection-port derivatization gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.

Secondary alkane sulfonate (SAS) surfactants were determined in aqueous samples from sewage treatment plants using solid-phase extraction (SPE) and a single-step procedure that combines elution and injection-port derivatization for sample analysis using gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry (GC/MS). A tetrabutylammonium ion pair reagent was applied both to elute SAS from C 18 bonded-silica disks as their ion pairs and to derivatize SAS ion pairs under GC injection-port conditions. SAS was effectively recovered from samples of raw sewage (>92%) and from primary (>98%) and secondary (>85%) sewage effluents. No sample cleanup steps were necessary became the identification and quantitation of SAS isomers and homologs were performed using mass selective detection