Bamboo charcoal as a novel solid-phase microextraction coating material for enrichment and determination of eleven phthalate esters in environmental water samples

This study demonstrates the potential of bamboo charcoal as a novel and inexpensive solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coating material for enrichment and determination of organic pollutants in water samples. Bamboo charcoal was prepared and used as a SPME coating material. Eleven phthalate esters (PAEs) were used as model analytes, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used for separation and detection. Important extraction conditions (ionic strength, stirring rate, and extraction time) and desorption conditions (desorption temperature and time) were systematically investigated and optimized. Linearity of 0.1-100 mu g L-1 and correlation coefficients of 0.9992-0.9998 were obtained under optimum conditions. Inter-day and intra-day repeatability were 2.15-9.93 % and 1.89-9.85 %, respectively, and fiber-to-fiber reproducibility was 5.42-9.66 %. On the basis of a chromatographic signal-to-baseline noise ratio of three, the limits of detection reached 0.004-0.023 mu g L-1. Satisfactory results were achieved when the bamboo coating was used for determination of 11 PAEs in real water samples. The experimental results indicate that bamboo charcoal has significant potential as a SPME coating material for rapid enrichment and sensitive determination of organic pollutants in environmental samples.