Preparation of magnetic nanographene sorbent for extraction and quantification of targeted PPCPs in environmental water samples

In this study, a novel graphene-based magnetic nanocomposite sorbent was prepared via one-step co-precipitation method and its chemical structure and morphology was studied. This novel sorbent was employed for the first time for extraction of seven pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in complex environmental water samples prior to high performance liquid chromatography with diode-array detection. Benefiting both nanographene sorbent and magnetic phase separation, provided some advantages such as fast separation, high adsorption capacity, low sorbent amount and solvent consumption in comparison with traditional methods. To achieve the optimum condition for the magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) procedure, various effective extraction parameters including mass of sorbent, desorption solvent volume and desorption time were optimized using central composite design (CCD). Under the optimal situation, the recoveries ranged from 70 up to 120% for majority of validation samples and relative standard deviations (RSDs) varied between 1.2% and 9.5%. The limits of detection for targeted analytes were in the range of 0.02 to 0.9 mg L-1. Finally, the proposed method was successfully applied to complex environmental samples with acceptable recoveries.