Application of bar adsorptive microextraction to determine trace organic micro-pollutants in environmental water matrices

ABSTRACT

The present work proposes the application of bar adsorptive micro-extraction (BAµE) coated with an N-vinylpyrrolidone polymer (NVP) combined with micro-liquid desorption (200 µL) followed by high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (BAµE(NVP)-µLD/HPLC-DAD) for the determination of trace levels of emerging organic micro-pollutants in environmental water matrices. The model compounds selected include an antibacterial/antifungal agent (triclosan), two pharmaceuticals (carbamazepine and diclofenac) and two steroid hormones (17α-ethinylestradiol and 17β-estradiol), in which the latter three were recently included in the European Union watch list of substances to be monitored in the field of water policy. Assays performed on 25 mL of ultrapure water samples spiked at the 8.0 µg L⁻¹ level yielded average recoveries ranging from 81.9 to 102.4% for the compounds studied using optimised experimental conditions. The proposed analytical methodology demonstrated suitable detection limits (0.02–0.10 µg L⁻¹) and good linear dynamic ranges (0.1–20.0 µg L⁻¹) with determination coefficients higher than 0.9909. Using the standard addition method (SAM), the present analytical approach was applied on environmental water matrices, including surface, sea, river and groundwaters. The proposed method proved to be a suitable and alternative sorption-based static micro-extraction technique for monitoring trace levels of organic micro-pollutants in environmental water matrices.

KEYWORDS:

• Bar adsorptive micro-extraction (BAµE)
• environmental water matrices
• floating sampling technology
• organic micro-pollutants
• HPLC-DAD

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) for funding (UID/MULTI/00612/2013), for the post-Doc (SFRH/BPD/86071/2012) and PhD (SFRH/BD/107892/2015) grants. The authors also wish to thank CAPES BEX 0394-14-9 (Brazil) for funding the PhD grant.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [BEX 0394-14-9];Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/107892/2015,SFRH/BPD/86071/2012,UID/MULTI/00612/2013];