Role of organic peroxides in ocean waters and measuring hydrogen peroxide in ocean waters using chemiluminescent flow-injection analysis method
Document Type Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Hydrogen peroxide (H2Ch) was determined to be the major component of the measurable peroxides in ocean waters by comparing the p-hydroxypheny1acetic acid (POHPAA) batch method, which cannot distinguish organic peroxides from H2O2 (Miller and Kester 1988), to a HPLC method which first separates the organic peroxides from H2O2 and then measures the concentration of each species (Lee et at 1997). These two methods produced results that are not significantly different from each other. A chemiluminescent (CL) method for analysis of H202 based on the reagent 10-melhyl-9-( p-formylphenyl)-acridinium carboxylate trifluoromethanesulfonate (AE) (Cooper et a1. 2000) was adapted to a flow-injection analysis (FIA) system. This AE-CL system was then compared to the POHPAA method on 108 paired samples representing a wide range of ocean water types. It was found that at low (<15 >nM) concentrations of H2O2 the POHPAA method measures on average 3.2 nM H2O2 higher than the AE-CL method and at higher concentrations the methods are indistinguishable. The offset at low concentrations is within the detection limit for the POHPAA batch technique.