A pipette tip multiwalled-carbon nanotube solid-phase extraction of lead in water and hair samples: application of the statistical Taguchi method to optimise the experimental variables

Abstract

A pipette tip multiwalled-carbon nanotube solid-phase extraction (PT-MWCNTs-SPE) coupled with flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) was developed for extraction and determination of lead in hair samples. In this study, PT-MWCNTs-SPE cartridge, assembled by packing MWCNTs as a sorbent into a 100-μL pipette tip. Taguchi’s method (L9 orthogonal array (OA)) as a statistical design of experiments was employed to optimise the factors and experiments that affected on the recovery of Pb(II). Under the optimum conditions, four parameters such as pH (P), volume of ligand (AL), sorbent amount (SA) and eluent concentrations of HNO₃ (EC) were chosen as important affecting parameters. The limit of detection (LOD) of this method was 0.86 µg L⁻¹ with relative standard deviations (RSD) ≤3% for Pb(II). Afterwards, the accuracy of proposed method was evaluated by TMDA 53.3 fortified water and NCS ZC 81002b human hair certified reference materials. The procedure was applied to lead contents of water and hair samples.

Keywords:

• lead
• pipette tip multiwalled-carbon nanotube solid-phase extraction
• hair samples
• Taguchi design
• flame atomic absorption spectrometry