Chitosan–Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Combined with Dispersive Liquid–Liquid Microextraction for the Determination of BTEX in Water Samples

Abstract

In this study, chitosan–zinc oxide nanoparticles were used as an adsorbent matrix for solid-phase extraction and combined with dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (SPE–DLLME) for determination of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene isomers (BTEX) in water samples. The eluent of SPE was used as the dispersive solvent of the DLLME for further purification and enrichment of the BTEX prior to gas chromatography-flame ionization detector analysis. The effect of variables, including amount of adsorbent, sample and eluent flow rate, type and volume of extraction and dispersive solvent, salt concentration, and extraction time, was investigated and they were optimized. Under the optimum conditions, good linearity for all BTEX with determination coefficients in the range of 0.9993 < r2 < 0.9997, suitable precision (1.4 % < RSD <1.9 %; where RSD refers to relative standard deviation), and low detection limits (0.5–1.1 µg L–1) were achieved. The current chitosan–zinc oxide nanoparticles SPE–DLLME procedure combines the advantages of SPE and DLLME, and was applied for determination of BTEX in water samples and acceptable recoveries were obtained.