Theoretical and experimental methods of determination of the breakthrough volume of SPE sorbents

Solid-phase extraction is one of the most popular sample preparation methods. The selection of the appropriate extraction system is an important stage in the elaboration of analytical procedure. In this case, the knowledge of the interactions between isolated compounds, sorbent and elution solvents seems to be important. The extraction ability of sorbents in the SPE bed depends also on: (i) the bed capacity: (ii) the volume of sample loaded, (iii) the nature and volumes of conditioning solvents and eluents. One of the important parameters is the breakthrough volume, which determines the maximum volume of water sample which can be introduced into the sorbent. In this work two methods of determination of the breakthrough volumes are presented: experimental method with frontal analysis, and theoretical method with computational applications. Both procedures were used for the characterization of nine polymeric sorbents based on divinylbenzene copolymers. Comparison of results allows to choose the computational procedure of breakthrough volume determination as the easier one and less time consuming. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.