Development of an eco-friendly method for the determination of total polychlorinated biphenyls in solid waste by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A simple and efficient solvent-free method for the quantification of total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in solid waste matrices by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry is proposed. Solid waste matrices spiked with Aroclor 1242 and Aroclor 1254 were used in this study. In this new approach, the cavity of the rotating disk device is loaded with the solid waste sample and water is used as leaching solvent allowing desorption of the analyzes. Concomitantly a solid phase microextraction fiber is directly immersed in the water to extract the analyzes. In order to improve the extraction efficiency, parameters such as pre-equilibrium, extraction time, temperature, ionic strength and the presence of an organic solvent were optimized. The values obtained for limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ) are suitable for the determination of total PCBs in solid wastes and, subsequently, the most appropriate destination for the disposal of the waste can be selected. The accuracy and precision of the method exhibited satisfactory results, providing relative recoveries of 80.2-96.0% for total PCBs (at three spiked levels) and the relative standard deviations were between 2.5% and 15.5%. These results showed that the proposed method is a promising alternative for the determination of PCBs in solid wastes.