Water analysis of the sixteen environmental protection agency—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons via solid-phase nanoextraction-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Abstract

The growing concern with a sustainable environment poses a new challenge to analytical chemists facing the routine monitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in water samples. The new method presented here meets several features of green analytical chemistry. PAHs are extracted from 500μL of water sample with 1mL of a gold nanoparticles aqueous solution and released with 100μL of organic solvents for subsequent analysis via gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The relative standard deviations of the overall procedure ranged from 2.4 (acenaphthene) to 7.8% (dibenz[a,h]anthracene). The limits of detection were excellent as well and varied from 4.94 (fluoranthene) to 65.5ngL−1 (fluorene). The excellent analytical figures of merit, the simplicity of the experimental procedure, the short analysis time and the reduced solvent consumption demonstrate the potential of this approach for the routine monitoring of the sixteen priority pollutants via and environmentally friendly methodology.