Implementing a superhydrophobic substrate in immersed solvent–supported microextraction as a novel strategy for determination of organic pollutants
in water samples
Mohammad Yahya Baktash, Aida Asem Yousefi, Habib Bagheri
Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 163 (2018) 104-110
doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2018.07.039
In this research, a new approach for extraction and determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from sea
and rain water samples was developed by implementing a superhydrophobic substrate and consuming the least
amount of solvent. This version of solvent–supported microextraction enabled us to perform the procedure in the
immersion mode with the slightest troubles arising from water leakage into the gas chromatography. The superhydrophobic property leads to the fixation of extracting solvent on the substrate surface during water
sampling. To prepare a superhydrophobic substrate, a piece of melamine foam was coated by tannic acid and
silica nanoparticles using methyltrimethoxysilane and tetramethyl orthosilicate. The morphology of the prepared foams was studied by scanning electron microscopy. The developed solvent–supported microextraction
method in combination with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry was applied to the isolation and determination of some typical polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from aquatic media. Influential parameters such
as substrate nature, extractive solvent, eluting solvent and its quantity and extraction time were investigated.
The limits of detection and quantification of the method under the optimized conditions were 0.01–0.11 µg L-1 and 0.03–1.01 µg L-1, respectively. The relative standard deviations at the concentration level of 20 µg L-1 were
between 3% and 14% (n = 3). The linearity of calibration curves ranged from 0.03 to 60 µg L-1. The implementation of the solvent-supported method to the analysis of real water samples was quite successful and the
relative recoveries were between 88% and 107%.