Simultaneous Determination of Hydrazine, Methylhydrazine, and 1,1-Dimethylhydrazine by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Pre- and Post-Column Derivatization by 5-Nitro-2-Furaldehyde

Abstract

Approaches to the chromatographic determination of 1,1-dimethylhydrazine and two main products of its degradation (hydrazine and methylhydrazine) on their simultaneous presence are proposed using derivatization by 5-nitro-2-furaldehyde and multi-wavelength spectrophotometric detection of the formed derivatives in the visible spectral region. A combination of preliminary derivatization with separation in the reversed-phase HPLC mode and also ion-chromatographic separation with post-column derivatization allowed us to reach the limits of detection for analytes lower than 1 μg/L and to determine 1,1-dimethylhydrazine at the level of the maximum permissible concentration without preconcentration. The developed approaches were tested on an acid extract of a sample of peat bog soil collected at the place of impact of the first stage of a carrier rocket. The identity of the results obtained by different methods and the high level of soil pollution by hydrazines are shown.