Polyurethane/polystyrene‐silica electrospun nanofibrous composite for the headspace solid‐phase microextraction of chlorophenols coupled with gas chromatography

Abstract

A novel electrospun composite nanofiber-based adsorbent (polyurethane/polystyrene-silica) was fabricated, characterized, and used in the headspace solid-phase microextraction of the acetylated derivatives of chlorophenols in water samples before gas chromatography with micro electron capture detection. The surface morphology, chemical composition, thermal stability, and structure of the fibers were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller and Barrett-Joyner-Halenda techniques. The effect of the main parameters influencing the efficiency of the method including extraction temperature, salt concentration, and extraction time was investigated and the optimized conditions were obtained. The linear dynamic ranges were 0.1-800 ng/mL. The relative standard deviations (n = 3) and the limits of detection were 2.64-9.57% and 0.0234-0.830 ng/mL, respectively. The relative recoveries for real samples (river water and sewage of our university campus) were between 90.8 and 111%.

Monitoring of priority pollutants chlorophenols in water and milk by headspace solid‐phase microextraction based on electrospun polycaprolactam nanofibers decorated with cadmium oxide‐carbon nanotubes

“…The representative GC‐μECD chromatograms for analysis of river, tap water, and milk samples were shown in Figure 3. A literature survey was carried out to compare the analytical performance of the developed method with other similar techniques, and the results were given in Supporting Information Table S1 [6,11,12,24–29]. As can be seen, the LOD and recoveries of this method are comparable with some methods and better than those of the others.…”

“…The mixture was electrospun to obtain composite nanofibers collected on a stainless-steel needle and used as HS-SPME fiber. To improve the sensitivity and selectivity of the method, the target CPs were acetylated by adding acetic anhydride at alkaline pH, followed by the addition of hydrogen carbonate [11]. The method was coupled with a gas chromatography-micro electron capture detector (GC-μECD) and applied for the determination of CPs of derivatized CPs in water and milk samples.…”

“…There are several strategies that in recent years have been applied for the determination of CPs in aqueous media such as dispersive liquid—liquid microextraction (DLLME) [7], SPE [8], liquid—liquid extraction (LLE) [9], and direct immersion‐SPME (DI‐SPME) [10], headspace‐SPME (HS‐SPME) [11,12]. Among these methods, HS‐SPME is a simple, low‐cost, fast, and solventless green sample preparation method that can be coupled with various separation techniques [13].…”

“…The electrospun polymer nanofibers with remarkable properties such as large specific surface area, high porosity, and simple fabrication procedure have been used as an adsorbent in HS‐SPME. These materials are fabricated with the electrospinning technique by applying a high voltage electric field to an appropriate polymer solution [11,15,16].…”

“…The combination of electrospun polymer nanofibers and nanomaterials to form hybrid composites such as electrospun polycaprolactam‐manganese oxide [17], polyurethane fibers doped with manganese oxide [18] has been used as the sorptive phase in HS‐SPME procedure [19]. The produced hybrid materials offer the synergistic effects of the nanosized materials and polymeric nanofibers such as enhanced specific surface area, highly porous structures, simple fabrication procedure of the nanofibers, and versatile functionalization of nanomaterials [11,20].…”