Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Drinking Water Samples by Solid-Phase Nanoextraction and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

A novel alternative is presented for the extraction and preconcentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from water samples. The new approach-which we have named solid-phase nanoextraction (SPNE)-takes advantage of the strong affinity that exists between PAH and gold nanoparticles. Carefully optimization of experimental parameters has led to a high-performance liquid chromatography method with excellent analytical figures of merit. Its most striking feature correlates to the small volume of water sample (500 mu L) for complete PAH analyses. The limits of detection ranged from 0.9 (anthracene) to 58 ng.L-1 (fluorene). The relative standard deviations at medium calibration concentrations vary from 3.2 (acenaphthene) to 9.1% (naphthalene). The analytical recoveries from tap water samples of the six regulated PAH varied from 83.3 +/- 2.4 (benzo[k]fluoranthene) to 95.7 +/- 4.1% (benzo[g,h,i]perylene). The entire extraction procedure consumes less than 100 mu L of organic solvents per sample, which makes it environmentally friendly. The small volume of extracting solution makes SPNE a relatively inexpensive extraction approach.