The analysis of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in water by microextraction and high performance liquid chromatographic techniques

Abstract

The analysis of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), i.e., anthracene, fluoranthene, fluorene and pyrene in water samples has been developed by microextraction with using subsequent determination by high performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection. Factors having effect on the percent recovery, such as, the extracting solvents (hexane, methylene chloride or toluene), the sample to solvent ratios (50:1 or 10:1) and the salting out with sodium chloride or anhydrous sodium sulfate were studied. The most suitable condition for microextraction of PAHs in water was using toluene, the sample to solvent ratio of 50:1, and salting out with anhydrous sodium sulfate, 76.54% to 100.30% recoveries with 0.91% to 5.15% RSD were obtained. This technique has high selectivity, no condensation problem at detector, high accuracy (% error of PAHs were in the range of 0.33 to 3.28) and high sensitivity. Aqueous samples containing subnanogram per milliliter of these PAHs could be easily determined.