Comprehensive analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in wastewater using stir bar sorptive extraction and gas chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry

Extraction of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons From Water Samples Into a Rotating-Disk Microextractor and the Subsequent Determination by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

“…Because all the PAHs under study are hydrophobic (Log Kow > 4), it was confirmed that presence of NaCl reduced the analyte extraction. Similar results were obtained by other authors using PDMS in both SBSE 4,12 and SPME 9 , where the addition of NaCl decreased the recovery of the PAHs studied. Consequently further experiments were performed in absence of salt.…”

“…Regarding to the precision of the method, it was determined as the repeatability of results from the recovery experiments, and was expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD, %). The RSDs were between 2 and 20 % where the less precise values were obtained for the three more hydrophobic analytes, similarly to the observed in other previous studies 12 . Detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) limits of the method (for 20 mL sample volume) were determined according to the IUPAC criterion (3σ and 10 σ, respectively).…”

“…In this context, to guarantee the quality of drinking water, EU Directive proposes, inter alia, the evaluation of five PAHs establishing the maximum concentration limits 8 . Different modern analytical methods have been described for the extraction of PAHs in liquid samples, among them solid-phase microextraction (SPME) 6,9,10 , solid-phase extraction (SPE) 11 and stir-bar-sorptive extraction (SBSE) 3,4,7,12 have been described. These modern techniques have the advantage over the conventional extraction methods in terms of solvent usage and removal time.…”

Atmospheric pressure gas chromatography–time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (APGC–ToF-MS) for the determination of regulated and emerging contaminants in aqueous samples after stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE)

“…Solid phase extraction (SPE) or liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) are often employed [9,10], although, over the last decade, the use of sorptive techniques such as stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) or solid-phase microextraction (SPME) has increased. Using polymers such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) that can adsorb moderately to highly hydrophobic contaminants, sorptive techniques minimize sample volume and manipulation, as well as the use of organic solvents, thus achieving lower detection limits than more conventional approaches [11,12]. After extraction, target compounds are often released from the polymer using thermodesorption (TD) units coupled to gas chromatography [13][14][15].…”

“…After preconcentration, analysis of most volatile nonpolar or semi-polar contaminants in water samples is usually performed by gas chromatography-quadrupole-mass spectrometry (GC-Q-MS) [9,16] or by tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) [12,18]. Most analytes are ionized and fragmented by electron impact (EI) ionization.…”