[Simultaneous determination of 18 fluorescent whitening agents in textiles by ultra performance liquid chromatography].

A method was developed for the simultaneous determination of 18 fluorescent white-ning agents (FWAs) in textiles by ultra performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (UPLC-FLR). The sample was extracted with chloroform-ethanol (6:4, v/v). The separation was performed on an ACQUITY UPLC HSS T3 column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.8 μm) with gradient elution. Methanol-water (containing 5 mmol/L ammonium acetate) was used as the mobile phase with a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min. The fluorescence detector was used at 350 nm excitation wavelength and 430 nm emission wavelength. External standard method was used for the quantitative determination. The calibration curves showed good linearity in respective ranges for the 18 FWAs with correlation coefficients (R2) no less than 0.9992. The limits of quantifications (LOQs, S/N=10) were in the range of 0.002-0.1 mg/L. The average recoveries of the 18 FWAs ranged from 88.3% to 104.5% at the different spiked levels with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 2.0%-5.5% (n=6). The method has high sensitivity, good precision and accuracy, and is applicable to the determination of all kinds of textiles.