Highly sensitive and selective determination of 9,10-phenanthrenequinone in airborne particulates using high-performance liquid chromatography with pre-column derivatization and fluorescence detection

9,10-Phenanthrenequinone (PQ), is one of the components of diesel exhaust particulates, has potent harmful effects on human health. For the determination of PQ in airborne particulates, a highly sensitive and selective high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed with fluorescence detection following the pre-column fluorescent derivatization. PQ was derivatized with benzaldehyde as a derivatizing reagent in the presence of ammonium acetate to give fluorescent 2-phenyl-1H-phenanthro [9,10-d] imidazole. The maximum fluorescence intensity of the derivative was observed by the reaction with 0.2 M benzaldehyde and 0.5 M ammonium acetate at 100 °C for 30 min. The HPLC separation of fluorescent derivative of PQ was performed within 20 min on an ODS column with a mixture of acetonitrile–water (55:45, v/v) as a mobile phase. Highly sensitive and selective determination of PQ was attained with the detection limit of 5 fmol (S/N = 3). By the proposed method, PQ in airborne particulates was successfully determined in the range 0.26–0.30 ng/m3 (n = 3).