“…Numerous preconcentration and separation techniques application have been reported for metal-ion analysis, which include cloud-point extraction (CPE) (Anthemidis et al 2001(Anthemidis et al , 2002, co-precipitation (Duran et al 2009), electrochemical deposition (ECD) (Soylak and Tuzen 2008), flotation (Pan et al 2007), liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) (Candir et al 2008), solid-phase extraction (SPE) (Otero-Romani et al 2005;Elci et al 2008;Huang et al 2008;Chen et al 2009), solid-phase microextraction (SPME) (Camel 2003;Chen et al 2009), etc. However, SPE is the preferred method mainly due to its simplicity, direct application in microlitre (lL) volume, speed, minimal sample loss, higher preconcentration factor, rapid phase separation, cost and time saving (Bulut and Tez 2007;Chen et al 2009;Mohammadi et al 2011).…”