Direct sensitive simultaneous determination of fluorinated benzoic acids in oil reservoir waters by ultra high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

A direct ultra-high performance reverse-phase HPLC (UHPLC) – electrospray MS/MS method was developed for the simultaneous determination of 16 fluorinated benzoic acids (FBAs) in oil reservoir waters. The separation was achieved within 5 min in a non-linear gradient mode using a 1-ml sample aliquot. The method detection limits were in the lower ng/ml range (between 0.05 and 50 ng/ml, depending on the compound) owing to the use of the travelling-wave collision cell technology. The method developed was more sensitive, faster (by avoiding sample preconcentration and purification steps) and more robust than the GC/MS methods currently used in oil industries. The accuracy of the method was verified by comparison with GC/MS results. It was applied to the determination of FBAs in water samples coming from reservoir tracing campaigns.