Ultrasonic Solvent Extraction of Persistent Organic Pollutants from Airborne Particles

Abstract

Ultrasonic solvent extraction of persistent organic pollutants including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) from airborne particles is reported. The extraction was optimized as functions of type and amount of solvent, sonication time, and number of extraction steps. Determination of PAHs and PCBs carried out by GC/MSD, while OCPs were determined using GC/l-ECD. The optimum extraction procedure was determined as three times consecutive extraction using a 25 mL mixture of n-hexane:petroleum ether (1/1, v/v) for 15 min of sonication. Recoveries were obtained between 91 l 2 and 96 l 1% with Relative Standard Deviation (RSD) f l 4% for PCBs, for PAHs recoveries (except for naphthalene, a 31%) were between 66 l 6 and 90 l 4% with RSD f l 8% while OCPs compounds recoveries were between 67 l 5 and 120 l 7% with RSD f l 7%. When comparing the Soxhlet extraction method with optimized ultrasonic solvent extraction method, extraction time and solvent volume were reduced considerably with the ultrasonic solvent extraction method without reducing extraction efficiency. In addition, a simultaneous analysis of PCBs, PAHs, and OCPs in one sampling by the optimized method is quite advantageous in terms of analysis time and cost.

Organochlorine Pesticides in Urban Air: Concentrations, Sources, Seasonal Trends and Correlation with Meteorological Parameters

“…The correlation coefficients between the other OCP concentrations and temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, TSP, PM10 were not significant at the 95% confidence level. Variations between meteorological parameters, TSP, PM 10 could not be explained completely by correlation analyses. These could probably be explained by variation in particulate characteristics such as particulate size, vapor pressure of compounds and the combined effects of meteorological parameters.…”

“…The extraction and clean-up procedures are described in more detail elsewhere [10,11]. Each of the PUF plugs were soxhlet extracted with a n-hexane: diethyl ether mixture (9/1, v/v) for 24 h.…”

Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Soil by Miniaturized Ultrasonic Extraction and Gas Chromatography‐Mass Selective Detection

“…Traditional and miniaturized clean-up columns used in the presented study were based on adsorption chromatography [10,17,18]. 150 and 7.5 lL of the 16-PAH mixed standard, containing 10 ng/lL of each PAH, were put onto the traditional and miniaturized columns, respectively.…”

Application of miniaturised ultrasonic extraction to the analysis of organochlorine pesticides in soil

“…An extraction step followed by a clean-up of the extract prior to the chromatographic analysis is required for the determination of trace levels of organic pollutants in a complex matrix. Various extraction procedures including Soxhlet [3][4][5], shaking flask [6][7][8], sonication [9][10][11], microwave assisted extraction (MAE) [12][13][14], super critical fluid extraction (SFE) [15][16][17][18] and pressured liquid extraction [19,20] can be used for the extraction of target compounds from the solid matrix.…”