Microbial degradation of chiral compounds during wastewater treatment
processes can be enantioselective and needs chiral analytical methodology to
discriminate the biodegradation of both enantiomers. An enantioselective HPLC-FD
method was developed and validated to monitor the degradation of fluoxetine (FLX)
enantiomers by wastewater and the possible formation of its metabolite norfluoxetine
(NFLX). The Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) of 50 mL of wastewater samples on 500 mg Oasis
MCX cartridges was followed by the HPLC analysis using a Chirobiotic V chiral stationary
phase under reversed mode. The developed method wasvalidated within the wastewater
effluent used in microcosms laboratory assays. The chiral SPE-HPLC-FD method
demonstrated to be selective, linear, sensitive, accurate and precise to quantify the
enantiomers of FLX and of its metabolites NFLX in wastewaters. The limits of detection
(0.8-2.0 ng mL
-1
) and quantification (2.0 – 4.0 ng mL
-1
) were adequate to monitoring the
degradation assays at environmental level. The method proved to be robust to follow the
biodegradation assays using real wastewater samplesspiked with FLX, during 46 days. To
the best of our knowledge, this is the first reportof simultaneous separation of FLX and
NFLX enantiomers using a Chirobiotic V and the application of the validated method to
the enantioselective degradation by wastewate
