Ionic liquid-based vortex-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction of organophosphorus pesticides in apple and pear

Abstract

An ionic liquid-based vortex-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) was developed for the analysis of trace amounts of six organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) in apple and pear coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography. During the DLLME, the effect of some experimental factors including extraction solvent and its volume, dispersion solvent and its volume, vortex time, salt addition, and pH on the extraction procedure were investigated. Under the chosen extraction conditions, the analytes were enriched more than 300-fold and the limits of detections were greatly dropped to 0.061-0.73 μg/kg. The linearity relationship was observed in the range of 2-100 μg/kg with the correlation coefficients (R(2)) ranging from 0.9967 to 0.9983. The relative standard deviations varied from 2.3 to 5.7% (n = 6). Mean recovery values of the OPPs were in the range of 69.8-109.1% with a relative standard deviation lower than 7.0%. Based on these above, it could be concluded that 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([C(8)MIM][PF(6)]) was a good extraction solvent and the proposed [C(8)MIM][PF(6)]-based vortex-assisted DLLME method was suitable for the effective extraction of the OPPs in apple and pear.