Determination of commonly used herbicides in surface water using solid-phase extraction and dual-column HPLC-DAD

The present study describes the application of different solid-phase extraction techniques for the extraction, separation, and quantitative determination of 10 commonly used herbicides with different chemical structures (chlorsulfuron, diuron, bentazone linuron, chlorpropham, fenoxoprop-ethyl, MCPA, diclofop-methyl, fluazifop-butyl, trifluraline) in water. Octadecyl (C-18) Empore extraction disks, octadecyl (C-18), and stryene divinylbenzene (SDB) Bond Elut Env cartridges were compared for solid-phase extraction efficiency. Herbicides were separated and quantified by reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography with diode-array detection (HPLC-DAD) with simultaneous separation on two columns of differing polarity (C-18 and CN) to confirm identification. Analytical separation was performed simultaneously on C18 and CN columns. Reanalysis of the sample extracts on a (cyano) CN column were used to confirm the identity of these compounds. Method optimization and validation parameters were presented in this work. Recoveries varied from 76.0% to 99.0% for C-18 disks, from 75.1% to 100.0% for C-18 cartridges, and from 54.0% to 98.0% for SDB cartridges over concentrations at 0.025--0.4 mu g L-1. The limits of detection were 0.012-0.035 mu g L-1.