Hollow fiber-solid phase microextraction of fatty acid methyl esters from wastewater coupled with micro sample collector assisted injection technique

Abstract

Hollow fiber-solid phase microextraction combined with micro sample collector assisted injection technique was developed for the detection of trace fatty acid methyl esters in biodiesel wastewater. Polypropylene hollow fiber was employed as extraction material to absorb fatty acid methyl esters in biodiesel wastewater. After the adsorption, hollow fiber was sleeved on the needle core of a micro sample collector and introduced directly into a GC injector for thermal desorption of the analytes. The selectivity of polypropylene hollow fiber on fatty acid methyl esters was investigated by extracting common pollutants in wastewater. Under the optimal conditions, the enrichment factors of polypropylene hollow fiber for methyl palmitate, methyl linoleate, methyl oleate, and methyl stearate were tested as high as 471, 287, 527, and 801, respectively. The quantitative method was validated and the linearity was satisfactory over a concentration range of 10–2000 µg/L with the correlation coefficients more than 0.9990 for 4 fatty acid methyl esters. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.04–0.40 µg/L and 10.0 µg/L, respectively. The recoveries were in the range of 92.0–116.7% by analyzing actual spiked samples. The results showed that the established method was suitable for the analysis of trace fatty acid methyl esters in water samples, with simple operation, low cost and environmental friendliness.