Multivariate Assessment of Procedures for Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Synthesis for Pesticides Determination in Environmental and Agricultural Samples.

In the case of quantitative and qualitative analysis of pesticides in environmental and food samples, it is required to perform a sample pre-treatment process. It allows to minimalize the impact of interferences on the final results, as well as increase the recovery rate. Nowadays, apart from routinely employed sample preparation techniques such as solid-phase extraction (SPE) or solid-phase microextraction (SPME), the application of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) is gaining greater popularity. It is mainly related to their physicochemical properties, sorption capacity and selectivity, thermo-mechanical resistance, as well as a wide range of polymerization techniques allowing to obtain the desired type of sorption materials, adequate to a specific type of pesticide. This paper targets to summarize the most popular and innovative strategies since 2010, associated with the MIPs synthesis and analytical procedures for pesticides determination in environmental and food samples. Application of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) allows for visualization of the most beneficial analytical procedures in case of changing the priority of each step of analysis (MIPs synthesis, sample preparation process-pesticides extraction, chromatographic analysis) bearing in mind metrological and environmental issues.

Searching for Solvents with an Increased Carbon Dioxide Solubility Using Multivariate Statistics.

Ionic liquids (ILs) are used in various fields of chemistry. One of them is CO2 capture, a process that is quite well described. The solubility of CO2 in ILs can be used as a model to investigate gas absorption processes. The aim is to find the relationships between the solubility of CO2 and other variables-physicochemical properties and parameters related to greenness. In this study, 12 variables are used to describe a dataset consisting of 26 ILs and 16 molecular solvents. We used a cluster analysis, a principal component analysis, and a K-means hierarchical clustering to find the patterns in the dataset and the discriminators between the clusters of compounds. The results showed that ILs and molecular solvents form two well-separated groups, and the variables were well separated into greenness-related and physicochemical properties. Such patterns suggest that the modeling of greenness properties and of the solubility of CO2 on physicochemical properties can be difficult.

Exploratory analysis and ranking of analytical procedures for short-chain chlorinated paraffins determination in environmental solid samples.

Short-chain chlorinated paraffins are ones of the most recent chemical compounds that have been classified as persistent organic pollutants. They have various applications and are emitted to the environment. Despite the fact, that the content levels of these compounds in the environmental compartments should be monitored, there is still a lack of well-defined and validated analytical procedures, proposed or suggested by the national or international environmental protection agencies. Finding an appropriate analytical procedure (sensitive and green at the same time) from many available ones is very often a difficult task. Therefore it can be supported with multicriteria decision analysis. The dataset consisting of 22 procedures was described by 7 criteria, mainly referring to procedures greenness. The data treatment with cluster analysis and principal component analysis revealed the internal structure of the dataset. Moreover, both statistical tools allowed for reduction of dataset criteria to three. This was used for applying ternary plot to show the multicriteria decision analysis results within all possible weights. With the aid of chemometric and multicriteria decision analysis tools it was easy to assess the set of analytical procedure. Depending on the applied weights to assessment criteria different analytical procedures are the most appropriate (winners).

How green are ionic liquids? - A multicriteria decision analysis approach.

Due to various desirable physicochemical properties, ionic liquids (ILs) are still gaining in popularity. ILs have been recurrently considered green solvents. However, environmental, health and safety assessments of ILs have raised certain doubts about their benignness, and their greenness status is currently unclear. To clarify the situation on their greenness, we perform a comprehensive assessment of more than 300 commercially available ILs. We apply multicriteria decision analysis, the tool that allows ranking many alternatives according to relevant criteria. They are toxicity towards various organisms, biodegradability, hazard statements and precautionary measures during their handling. We incorporated organic solvents to rankings, as their greenness is better described, so they serve as greenness reference points. The ranking results obtained considering the whole set of criteria show that ILs are placed between recommended polar solvents and problematic/undesirable non polar organic solvents in terms of greenness. However, the exclusion of toxicity data due to unavailability of endpoints results in assessment of ILs as greener than most of organic solvents.