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The determination of ethanolamines is essential for the use of alkanolamine based solvents in post-combustion CO2 capture from flue gas. The detection of monoethanolamine (MEA), diethanolamine (DEA), and N-methyldiethanol-amine (MDEA) was performed using non-suppressed cation exchange chromatography (IC) on a Dionex IonPac SCSI column with methanesulfonic acid/acetonitrile as eluent. A statistics-based experimental design with response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize the IC operating parameters. The experimental results were evaluated using multivariate analysis with the MODDE 9.0 program. The developed method was applied to the quantitative analysis of traditional ethanolamine and ammonium ions, and was found to be linear in the range 0.01-10mM injected with coefficients of determination better than 0.999. Monomethylamine and dimethylamine as presumed degradation products were not detected in the partially degraded ethanolamine systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]