Magnetic nanoporous carbon as an adsorbent for the extraction of phthalate esters in environmental water and aloe juice samples

In this work, magnetic nanoporous carbon with high surface area and ordered structure was synthesized using cheap commercial silica gel as template and sucrose as the carbon source. The prepared magnetic nanoporous carbon was firstly used as an adsorbent for the extraction of phthalate esters, including diethyl phthalate, diallyl phthalate, and di-n-propylphthalate, from lake water and aloe juice samples. Several parameters that could affect the extraction efficiency were optimized. Under the optimum conditions, the limit of detection of the method (S/N = 3) was 0.10 ng/mL for water sample and 0.20 ng/mL for aloe juice sample. The linearity was observed over the concentration range of 0.50-150.0 and 1.0-200.0 ng/mL for water and aloe juice samples, respectively. The results showed that the magnetic nanoporous carbon has a high adsorptive capability toward the target phthalate esters in water and aloe juice samples.