Separation and pre-concentration of glucocorticoids in water samples by ionic liquid supported vortex-assisted synergic microextraction and HPLC determination

We have developed a synergic microextraction procedure based on ionic liquid for the pre-concentration and determination of glucocorticoids in water samples. Using nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 (TX-100) as synergic reagent, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexa-fluorophosphate accomplished extraction rapidly without heating in water bath. One key property of ionic liquids that highlights their potential is their wide liquid temperature range. The improved extraction was named as ionic liquid supported vortex-assisted synergic microextraction. Compared with the traditional liquid-liquid extraction and cloud point extraction, ionic liquid supported vortex-assisted synergic microextraction was accomplished in 8min with considerably high recovery. The proposed method greatly improved the sensitivity of HPLC for the determination of glucocorticoids. The results obtained indicated a good linearity with the correlation coefficient of 0.997 over the range of 0.6-300 ng/mL and high sensitivity with LODs of 4.11, 9.19, and 7.50 ng/mL for hydrocortisone butyrate, beclomethasone dipropionate, and nandrolone phenylpropionate, respectively. The RSD of the method was 1.57-1.81% (n = 6) with enrichment factor of 99.85, and good recovery (97.24%). The method was successfully applied to the determination of glucocorticoids inmineral water, water of Dianchi lake, and tap water samples.