High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) for the quantitative determination of
nonylphenol polyethoxylates (NPE) in wastewater is described. The ethoxy chain length distribution was
performed by normal phase HPLC using a UV detector. Two techniques for the isolation of APE from
wastewater were compared: gaseous stripping into ethyl acetate to extract the analytes from the samples,
and a column method. The mean values of influents and effluents were 1406 ~tg/L and 62 I-tg/L respectively.
The removal of NPE ranged from 92 to 97%. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd