pH effects on micelle-water partitioning determined by micellar electrokinetic chromatography.

In many biological and environmental situations, the pH of aqueous media varies and differences in solute partitioning may result. However, the majority of biopartitioning and hydrophobicity studies conducted have been at pH 7. Using migration factors measured by micellar electrokinetic chromatography, we have determined pH effects on micelle-water partitioning for 19 compounds. We develop an improvement to the migration factor equation and the corrected migration factor for aniline shows a definite increase as pH decreases. The corrected migration factor was constant for the rest of the compounds over the pH ranged studied. We also investigated five micelle markers and determined that decanophenone is the best micelle marker to date. Decanophenone has a strong chromophore, detectable at all pH levels, and is easy to dissolve in the mobile phase.