PH‐assisted homogeneous liquid–liquid microextraction using dialkylphosphoric acid as an extraction solvent for the determination of chlorophenols in water samples

Abstract

In this study, a new pH-assisted homogeneous liquid-liquid microextraction combined with HPLC with UV detection was developed for the determination of chlorophenols in water samples. In this approach, bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate was used for the first time as the low-density extraction solvent. In particular, 60 μL of bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate was injected into the sample solution (5 mL) and dissolved completely in the sample solution while the pH was increased to 9. Afterwards, the pH of the sample solution was lowered to 1, and a cloudy solution was formed. At this stage, hydrophobic interactions between the analytes and the long double hydrocarbon chains of extraction solvent were expected to be the main forces driving extraction. A series of parameters that influence extraction were investigated systematically. Under the optimized conditions, the LODs and LOQs for the chlorophenols were 1.4-2.7 and 4.7-9.1 ng/mL, respectively. RSDs based on five replicate extraction of 100 ng/mL of each chlorophenols were <4.7% for intraday and 7.4% for interday precision. This method has been also successfully applied to analyze real water samples at two different spiked concentrations, and satisfactory recoveries were achieved.