[CharlieP]

Hello,

New to the forum so please go easy

Would anyone possibly have any knowledge of a quick and easy liquid/liquid extraction method to extract triethanolamine (TEA) from water??  I have an analysis method sorted using BSTFA to derivatize the extracted TEA in a non-protic solvent before GC-MS analysis but, I have failed so far to extract TEA from spiked water samples.

Any help would be much appreciated,

JP 

[Honclbrif]

Aside from being incredibly polar, its a surfactant and and emulsifier: might be tough. You could try cranking the pH up to around 10 to insure the amine is deprotonated and extract it into your favorite organic solvent. However, since its so basic, you might have some sort of luck with ion exchange chromatography. Alternatively, it has a pretty high BP, so if you have access to a vacuum pump or, even better, a lyophilizer you might be able to take the water out of the TEA instead of taking the TEA out of the water.