Ultraviolet degradation of methyltins: elucidating the mechanism by identification of a detected new intermediary product and investigating the kinetics at various environmental conditions

The photodegradation of methyltins, as environmental pollutants, has scarcely been studied so far because of the shortage of rapid and sensitive speciation methods, even though they have very simple structures. The photodegradation of monomethyltin trichloride (MMT), dimethyltin dichloride (DMT) and trimethyltin chloride (TMT) was studied with our new developed HPLC-FPD hyphenated system, which enables rapid and sensitive detection of methyltins. The half-life times and kinetic rate constants of their degradation at different pH were calculated. The results suggest that MMT, DMT and TMT can be degraded under the UV irradiation rapidly at different pH, with a degradation rate sequence of TMT