Detection of C60 in environmental water using dispersive liquid-liquid micro-extraction followed by high-performance liquid chromatography

The wide application of fullerene C-60 nanoparticles would inevitably lead to their release into the environment. In order to evaluate the environment risks of C-60 and the subsequent effects on ecosystem health, a reliable quantitative methodology of C-60 should be established. In this study, a rapid pretreatment method called low-density solvent-based dispersive liquid-liquid micro-extraction (DLLME) combined high-performance liquid chromatography-UV detector (HPLC-UV) was developed to detect C-60 in environmental water. In this proposed method, toluene and methanol were chosen as the extraction solvent and the dispersive solvent, respectively. The optimized volume of extraction solvent and dispersive solvent were 100 mu L and 10 mu L, respectively. And the best shaking time was chosen as 10 min at room temperature for the optimal homogenization procedure for the extraction of C-60 in water samples. The enrichment factor of 50 was obtained with 100 mu L toluene, and the recoveries of C-60 from various environmental samples were in the range of 81.4 +/- 5.0-101.4 +/- 6.2% at 1.25-5.00 mu g/L spiked levels. The detection limits of C-60 in tap water, surface water, living sewage and mining waste water were 0.19, 0.29, 0.34 and 0.22 mu g/L, respectively. The low detection limit, good linear range and high recoveries of C-60 in environmental water indicated that the proposed method could provide an efficient approach for the analysis and tracking of C-60 in the environment.