Abstract: Based on the inhibition by hydroquinone, catechol and resorcinol of chemiluminescence from luminol potassium hexacyanoferrate(Ⅲ) system, a high performance liquid chromatographic procedure with chemiluminescenT_detection was developed for simultaneous determination of hydroquinone, catechol and resorcinol. The separation was carried out on RP-C₁₈ column at 37 ℃ by using a step gradient elution made by the mobile phases of methanol(A) and 0.05% H₃PO₄(B). The gradient elution condition was 95% B, 5 min; 95%B-50%B, 1 min; 50% B, 6 min. This method has the merits of high senstivity and good selectivity. The detection limits for hydroquinone, catechol and resorcinol are 2.0×10^-9 , 3.2×10^-9 and 6.8×10^-7 g/mL, respectively. The relative standard deviation( n =5) is 1.9% for 2.5×10^-7 g/mLhydroquinone, 1.0% for 7.5×10^-7 g/mLcatechol, 4.0% for 5.0×10^-5 g/mLresorcinol, respectively. The recovery is in the range of 94%—104%.

Key words: Chemiluminescence, High performance liquid chromatography, Hydroquinone, Catechol, Resorcinol