Development of an analytical method for the simultaneous determination of 50 semi-volatile organic contaminants in wastewaters
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Date
2023-06-11Author
Mijangos Treviño, Leire
Bilbao Alemany, Dennis
López Herguedas, Naroa
Olivares Zabalandicoechea, Maitane
Zuloaga Zubieta, Olatz
Etxebarria Loizate, Nestor
Ortueta Mateo, Natalia
Prieto Sobrino, Ailette
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MethodsX 11 : (2023) // Article ID 102252
Abstract
This work describes the development of a robust analytical methodology for the simultaneous
determination of 50 semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in wastewater effluent samples
by solid-phase extraction (SPE) followed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry
(GC–MS) analysis. In this work, we studied extensively whether the validated SPE method used
for the analysis of polar compounds in wastewaters could be extended to the analysis of non-polar
compounds in the same analytical run. To that aim, the effect of different organic solvents in the
SPE process (i.e., sample conditioning prior to SPE, elution solvent and evaporation steps) was
evaluated. In this sense, the addition of methanol to wastewater samples before the extraction,
the use of hexane:toluene (4:1, v/v) mixture for the quantitative elution of target compounds,
and the addition of isooctane during the evaporation were required to minimize analyte losses
during SPE and enhance extraction yields. Overall, the developed methodology showed a good
performance for the determination of 50 SVOCs, and was further applied to the analysis of real
wastewater effluent samples.