Determination of Acrylates in Wastewater by Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction Coupled to Capillary Gas Chromatography

Abstract

This study describes an analytical method employing capillary gas chromatography (GC) using flame ionization detection (FID) that has been developed for the simultaneous determination of acrylates (methyl acrylate (MA), methyl methacrylate (MMA), butyl acrylate (BA)) in wastewater. For this purpose, dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) was applied as a sample preparation technique. The DLLME conditions such as the types and volume of extraction solvent, the types and volume of the disperser solvent, pH value and salt addition were studied and optimized. The method was linear in the ranges from 4.3×10-4 to 200.0 μg·mL-1 for abovementioned acrylates with R2≥ 0.9992. The DLLME procedure allowed efficient recovery of the investigated acrylates ranging between 81 % and 109 % with a relative standard deviation (RSD) ≤ 9.1 for the blank samples spiked with 10, 50 and 100 μg·mL-1 of acrylates, respectively. These results showed the potential of this technique for acrylates monitoring in wastewater samples. Furthermore, the investigated methods are simple, reproducible, and inexpensive.