Gas chromatographic determination of triclopyr in environmental waters

Abstract

The reaction of BF₃-trifluoroethanol with an extract of triclopyr from an acidified sample solution to form the trifluoroethyl ester has been applied to the determination of triclopyr in environmental waters. The product is cleaned up by silica-gel column chromatography and determined by gas chromatography with electron-capture detection.

The detection and determination limits were 0.005 ng and 0.00025 µg ml^–1, respectively. The recovery and coefficient of variation were found to be 90–93% and less than 4%, respectively (n= 7), for recovery experiments on river waters.