Determination of triclosan and triclocarban in environmental water samples with ionic liquid/ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction prior to HPLC-ESI-MS/MS

A hydrophobic ionic liquid was finely dispersed in aqueous solution along with a hydrophilic ionic liquid. Following centrifugation, the two phases aggregate to form relatively large droplets. Based on this phenomenon, a method termed ionic liquid/ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction was developed. It was applied to the enrichment of triclosan (TCS) and triclocarban (TCC) from water samples prior to HPLC with electrospray tandem MS detection. The type and volume of the hydrophobic ionic liquid (the extraction solvent) and the hydrophilic ionic liquid (the disperser solvent), salt content, and extraction time were optimized. Under optimum conditions, the method gives a linear response in the concentration ranges from 0.5 to 100 mu g L(-1) for TCC and from 2.5 to 500 mu g L(-1) for TCS, respectively. The limits of detection are 0.23 and 0.35 mu g L(-1), and the repeatability is 5.4 and 6.4% for TCC and TCS, respectively. The method was validated with four environmental water samples, and average recoveries of spiked samples were in the range from 88% to 111%. The results indicate that the method is a promising new approach for the rapid enrichment and determination of organic pollutants.