Fluorescence Spectrophotometer Analysis of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Environmental Samples Based on Solid Phase Extraction Using Molecularly Imprinted Polymer

Abstract

A molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was synthesized using a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) standard as a template, methacrylic acid as a functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as a cross-linker, and acetonitrile as a porogen. This polymer was used as a solid phase adsorbent for the quantitative enrichment of PAHs in coastal sediments, atmospheric particulates, and industrial effluents. The MIP selective adsorption capacity for PAHs started reducing when the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total dissolved solids (TDS) was more than 800 mg L(-1) in the targeted environmental samples. The adsorption stability of the MIP was tested by the consecutive contact of environmental samples, and it was shown that the performance of the MIP did not vary after 10 enrichments and desorption cycles. Recoveries of eight PAH compounds, extracted from 10 g of coastal sediments and 1 L of industrial effluent spiked with 10 microL of standard PAHs, showed recoveries between 85 and 96%. The fluorescence spectrophotometer limit of detection of PAHs varied from 10 to 30 etag L(-1) in industrial effluent and from 0.1 to 2.9 etag kg(-1) in solid samples (coastal sediment and atmospheric particulates), and this indicates that the environmental analytical method is significantly sensitive, when compared with other commonly used methods such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Organic Micropollutants

“…One recent paper reports the use of a molecularly imprinted polymer as a solid-phase adsorbent for the quantitative enrichment of PAHs in coastal sediments (Krupadam et al ., 2009). Recoveries from 10 g of coastal sediment samples ranged from 85 to 96%.…”

Optical and electrical nano eco-sensors using alternative deposition of charged layer

“…Many receptors focus their work on fluorescence-based sensing for glucose biosensors [43][44][45][46], DNA biosensors [47][48][49][50][51][52][53] and environmental monitoring, such as phenols [54][55], polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [56][57][58], total trihalomethanes (THMs), and haloacetic acids (HAAs) [59], pesticides [60][61][62][63], and metal ions [64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72].…”

Determination of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in seawater using molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

“…Besides, the double template imprinting was employed for dispersive solid-phase microextraction and attained satisfactory cleanup and enrichment efficiency for three PAHs in seawater [26]. The multi-molecular imprinting technique was proposed that the MIP-particles were prepared by using six PAHs mix as a template, and successfully applied for selective adsorption of PAHs [27,28]. Furthermore, the MIPs-SPE with five-PAH mix as template was employed, and thereby highly sensitive determination of PAHs in ambient air dust was attained by GC-MS [29].…”