Dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction combined with gas chromatography-flame photometric detection. Very simple, rapid and sensitive method for the determination of organophosphorus pesticides in water.

A new method was used for the extraction of organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) from water samples: dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with gas chromatography-flame photometric detection (GC-FPD). In this extraction method, a mixture of 12.0 microL chlorobenzene (extraction solvent) and 1.00 mL acetone (disperser solvent) is rapidly injected into the 5.00 mL water sample by syringe. Thereby, a cloudy solution is formed. In fact, the cloudy state is because of the formation of fine droplets of chlorobenzene, which has been dispersed among the sample solution. In this step, the OPPs in water sample are extracted into the fine droplets of chlorobenzene. After centrifuging (2 min at 5000 rpm), the fine droplets of chlorobenzene are sedimented in the bottom of the conical test tube (5.0+/-0.3 microL). Sedimented phase (0.50 microl) is injected into the GC for separation and determination of OPPs. Some important parameters, such as kind of extraction and disperser solvent and volume of them, extraction time, temperature and salt effect were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, the enrichment factors and extraction recoveries were high and ranged between 789-1070 and 78.9-107%, respectively. The linear range was wide (10-100,000 pg/mL, four orders of magnitude) and limit of detections were very low and were between 3 to 20 pg/mL for most of the analytes. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) for 2.00 microg/L of OPPs in water with internal standard were in the range of 1.2-5.6% (n=5) and without internal standard were in the range of 4.6-6.5%. The relative recoveries of OPPs from river, well and farm water at spiking levels of 50, 500 and 5000 pg/mL were 84-125, 88-123 and 93-118%, respectively. The performance of proposed method was compared with solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and single drop microextraction. DLLME is a very simple and rapid (less than 3 min) method, which requires low volume of sample (5 mL). It also has high enrichment factor and recoveries for extraction of OPPs from water.

Determination of organic compounds in water using dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction.

A new microextraction technique termed dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) was developed. DLLME is a very simple and rapid method for extraction and preconcentration of organic compounds from water samples. In this method, the appropriate mixture of extraction solvent (8.0 microL C2Cl4) and disperser solvent (1.00 mL acetone) are injected into the aqueous sample (5.00 mL) by syringe, rapidly. Therefore, cloudy solution is formed. In fact, it is consisted of fine particles of extraction solvent which is dispersed entirely into aqueous phase. After centrifuging, the fine particles of extraction solvent are sedimented in the bottom of the conical test tube (5.0 +/- 0.2 microL). The performance of DLLME is illustrated with the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in water samples by using gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID). Some important parameters, such as kind of extraction and disperser solvent and volume of them, and extraction time were investigated. Under the optimum conditions the enrichment factor ranged from 603 to 1113 and the recovery ranged from 60.3 to 111.3%. The linear range was 0.02-200 microg/L (four orders of magnitude) and limit of detection was 0.007-0.030 microg/L for most of analytes. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) for 2 microg/L of PAHs in water by using internal standard were in the range 1.4-10.2% (n = 5). The recoveries of PAHs from surface water at spiking level of 5.0 microg/L were 82.0-111.0%. The ability of DLLME technique in the extraction of other organic compounds such as organochlorine pesticides, organophosphorus pesticides and substituted benzene compounds (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylenes) from water samples were studied. The advantages of DLLME method are simplicity of operation, rapidity, low cost, high recovery, and enrichment factor.

Homogeneous Liquid-Liquid Microextraction for Determination of Organophosphorus Pesticides in Environmental Water Samples Prior to Gas Chromatography-Flame Photometric Detection.

In this study, homogeneous liquid-liquid microextraction (HLLME) was developed for preconcentration and extraction of 15 organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) from water samples coupling with gas chromatography followed by a flame photometric detector (HLLME-GC-FPD). In this method, OPPs were extracted by the homogeneous phase in a ternary solvent system (water/acetic acid/chloroform). The homogeneous solution was excluded by the addition of sodium hydroxide as a phase separator reagent and a cloudy solution was formed. After centrifugation (3 min at 5,000 rpm), the fine particles of extraction solvent (chloroform) were sedimented at the bottom of the conical test tube (10.0 ± 0.5 µL). Furthermore, 0.5 µL of the sedimented phase was injected into the GC for separation and determination of OPPs. Optimal results were obtained under the following conditions: volume of the extracting solvent (chloroform), 53 µL; volume of the consolute solvent (acetic acid), 0.76 mL and concentration of sodium hydroxide, 40% (w/v). Under the optimum conditions, the enrichment factors of (260-665), the extraction percent of 75.8-104%, the dynamic linear range of 0.03-300 µg L(-1) and the limits of detection of 0.004-0.03 µg L(-1) were obtained for the OPPs. This method was successfully applied for the extraction and determination of the OPPs in environmental water samples.