Not One Method to Rule Them All: A Comparative Study of Chromatographic Platforms (RP-LC-, HILIC-, SFC-, and IC-HRMS) for Water Analysis.

ABSTRACT: Reversed-phase liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (RP-LC-HRMS) is the standard for nontarget screening (NTS) of environmental samples but lacks retention of highly polar contaminants. We compared 12 chromatographic methods across four platforms, RP-LC, anion chromatography (IC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), and hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC), using 127 environmentally relevant compounds (logD_pH7.4 -5.6 to 6.6). Compounds were analyzed in solvent and for a polar subset, in groundwater enriched by vacuum evaporation. Data were collected across four laboratories using 5 RP-LC-, 3 HILIC-, 2 SFC-, and 2 IC-HRMS setups. Feature detection with standard tools yielded more false negatives for SFC and IC. To enable a fair

SUBMITTER: Zweigle J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12631722 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature