Ex-situ and in-situ rapid and quantitative determination of benzene derivatives in seawater using nanoconfined liquid phase nanoextraction

Benzene derivatives (BDs) constitute a class of environmental pollutants whose exposure poses a grave risk to human health. These compounds rapidly diffuse from the atmosphere to the marine ecosystem: for this reason, their monitoring in seawater is every day more compelling. In this work, nanoconfined liquid phase nanoextraction (NLPNE), a versatile extraction technique recently described, has been for the first time applied to the gas chromatographic mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis of BDs in seawater. Ex-situ and in-situ NLPNE procedures have been developed and optimized in terms of extraction capabilities, analysis time, precision, and accuracy. Compared to the traditional extraction procedures, based on solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), the proposed NLPNE methods allowed a rapid on-site analysis of benzene compounds with low solvent consumption, higher enrichment factors, and improved automation grade. Determination coefficients ranging from 0.9929 to 0.9997 were obtained for all BDs in the range 0.10-500 ng mL(-1) and 5.00-500 ng mL(-1), for ex-situ and in-situ NLPNE, respectively. Ex-situ and in-situ limits of detection ranged from 0.2 to 7.6 ng mL(-1) and 0.04-1.00 ng mL(-1). Our results suggest that NLPNE coupled to GC-MS can be considered a powerful technique for high-throughput analyses of trace compounds in environmental, food and biological samples.

Automated summary

Nanoconfined liquid phase nanoextraction (NLPNE) was successfully applied to the gas chromatographic mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis of benzene derivatives in seawater, allowing rapid on-site analysis with improved enrichment factors and high determination coefficients.