Application of new approaches to liquid-phase microextraction for the determination of emerging pollutants

Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) has been widely used as a pre-treatment technique for separation and preconcentration of organic analytes from aqueous samples. Nevertheless, this technique has several drawbacks, mainly in the use of large volumes of solvents, making LLE an expensive, environmentally-unfriendly technique. Miniaturized methodologies [e.g., liquid-phase microextraction (LPME)] have arisen in the search for alternatives to conventional LLE, using negligible volumes of extracting solvents and reducing the number of steps in the procedure. Developments have led to different approaches to LPME, namely single-drop microextraction (SDME), hollow-fiber LPME (HF-LPME), dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) and solidified floating organic drop microextraction (SFODME). This overview focuses on the application of these microextraction techniques to the analysis of emerging pollutants. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.