Simultaneous determination of nitrate and nitrite in gunshot residue has been conducted by capillary electrophoresis using an acidic run buffer (pH 3.5). In previously developed capillary electrophoretic methods, alkaline pH separation buffers were used where nitrite and nitrate possess similar electrophoretic mobility. In this study, the electroosmotic flow has been reversed by using low pH running buffer without any additives. As a result of reversing the electroosmotic flow, very fast analysis has been actualized, well-defined and separated ion peaks emerge in less than 4 min. Besides, the limit of detection was improved by employing large volume sample stacking. Limit of detection values were 6.7 and 4.3 μM for nitrate and nitrite, respectively. In traditional procedure, mechanical agitation is employed for extraction, while in this work the extraction efficiency of ultrasound mixing for 30 min was found sufficient. The proposed method was successfully applied to authentic gunshot residue samples.

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A quick method for the simultaneous determination of nitrate, nitrite and bromate ions in tea infusions using capillary zone electrophoresis was developed. A three‐factor full factorial design was applied for the determination of optimal conditions. Prior to the full factorial analysis, a number of experiments were conducted. A 50 mM phosphate buffer solution with pH 3.5 was selected. A capillary temperature of 40 °C, −20 kV applied voltage, 61.5 cm total capillary length (53.5 cm effective length) with 50 μm i.d., and 50 mbar injection pressure for 30 s were used. The limits of detection for nitrate, nitrite, and bromate were 0.60, 0.99, and 2.14 mg/L, respectively. The anions could be detected by the method with good resolution within 7 min with average spike recovery ranging between 91.6 and 105.5% (n = 3).