Hi!
I´m a swedish student and I´m working on my thesis. I´m going to analyze EDTA but also fosfate and nitrate, my teacher suggested me to use IC to analyze it but I didn´t find anything on this regarding detection of edta. I think its ok use it to analyze the fosfate and nitrate samples but not the edta....help!!!Thanks!!!
Lorena

Check this reference:
Loyaux-Lawniczak, S., Douch, J., Behra, P. Fresenius J Anal Chem 364, 727-731 (1999)
They complex the EDTA with Iron and use ion-pair reverse phase and UV detection.

There is an example of simultaneous analysis of inorganic anions and EDTA in: Ion Chromatography, Second Edition by Joachim Weiss on page 118. This reference describes the use of an IonPac AS5 at 2 ml per minute with 2mM sodium bicarbonate and 2mM sodium carbonate using suppressed conductivity detection. In the example, EDTA is added to the sample to convert metals presents into EDTA complexes so as to allow simultaneous analysis of metals and anions. You can turn this around the other way and add one of the metals to your sample so that you can analyze for EDTA. Probably nickel would be the best choice to convert EDTA to a metal-EDTA complex but another plausible choice would be zinc (although this metal isn't shown in the example chromatogram). Phosphate isn't shown in the chromatogram either but it should elute near sulfate under these conditions. The main point to keep in mind, however, is that you need to make sure you don't have a large excess of metal in your sample as this will affect the recovery of phosphate. Depending upon the relative levels involved, you might find it preferable to analyze EDTA in a separate analytical procedure.

in pharmaceutical industry we complex EDTA with cupric sulfate and analyze by RP HPLC, C-18 column, 254 nm, buffered mobile phase at pH 4.5 with 15% methanol