Ion chromatographic determination of trace hydroxylamine in waste streams generated by a pharmaceutical reaction process

Hydroxylamine is a key raw material used in a synthetic drug process at Pharmacia. Since hydroxylamine is harmful to microorganisms, concentrations above 5 ppm could interfere with the biological sewage plant performance. This necessitated the development of a sensitive analytical method for detecting low levels of hydroxylamine in the waste streams generated from the pharmaceutical process. The present report describes a cation-exchange chromatographic method coupled with pulsed amperometric detection at a gold electrode for trace analysis of hydroxylamine. This method was evaluated by generating data on the parameters of specificity, precision, linearity, recovery and sensitivity.