A rapid and simple capillary electrophoresis method for indirect determination of the biocide 2,2-dibromo-3-nitrilo-propionamide (DBNPA) in cooling waters

A capillary zone electrophoresis (CE) method was developed for the determination of the biocide 2,2-dibromo-3-nitrilo-propionamide (DBNPA) in water used in cooling systems. The biocide is indirectly determined by CE measurement of the concentration of bromide ions produced by the reaction between the DBNPA and bisulfite. The relationship between the bromide peak areas and the DBNPA concentrations showed a good linearity and a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.9997 in the evaluated concentration range of 0–75 μmol L⁻¹. The detection and quantification limits for DBNPA were 0.23 and 0.75 μmol L⁻¹, respectively. The proposed CE method was successfully applied for the analysis of samples of tap water and cooling water spiked with DBNPA. The intra-day and inter-day (intermediary) precisions were lower than 2.8 and 6.2%, respectively. The DBNPA concentrations measured by the CE method were compared to the values obtained by a spectrophotometric method and were found to agree well.