Abstract: A method for the simultaneous determination of glyoxalate and oxalate by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) was developed. The influences of type, concentration and pH of the running buffer, and the applied voltage on separation were investigated. Glyoxalate and oxalate were separated within 11 min under the conditions of 20 mmol/L borax-5.5 mmol/L potassium hydrogen phthalate (pH 9.0), applied voltage of 20 kV, and detected wavelength of 212 nm. The calibration curves of glyoxalate and oxalate showed good linearity in the ranges of 0.8~20 g/L and 1.2~20 g/L, respectively. The correlation coefficients were 0.9993 and 0.9975, respectively. The limits of detection for glyoxalate and oxalate were 0.2 and 0.4 g/L (S/N=3), respectively. The average recoveries at three spiked levels were 98.3%~102.5% with acceptable relative standard deviations of 0.35%~0.61%. This method is simple, low cost and high performance. The method was successfully used for the determination of glyoxalate and oxalate in real samples, and the assay results were satisfactory.

Key words: glyoxalate, oxalate, capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE)