Small nanofibrous disks for preconcentration of environmental contaminants followed by direct in-vial elution and chromatographic determination

Slavomíra Zatrochová; Ivona Lhotská; Jakub Erben; Jiří Chvojka; František Švec; Petr Chocholouš; Dalibor Šatínský

doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2023.124688

Small nanofibrous disks for preconcentration of environmental contaminants followed by direct in-vial elution and chromatographic determination

Talanta. 2023 Oct 1:263:124688. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.124688. Epub 2023 May 25.

Authors

Slavomíra Zatrochová¹, Ivona Lhotská¹, Jakub Erben², Jiří Chvojka², František Švec¹, Petr Chocholouš¹, Dalibor Šatínský³

Affiliations

¹ Charles University, Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Akademika Heyrovského 1203, 500 05, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic.
² The Technical University of Liberec, Faculty of Textile Engineering, Department of Nonwovens and Nanofibrous Materials, Studentská 1402/2, 46001, Liberec 1, Czech Republic.
³ Charles University, Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Akademika Heyrovského 1203, 500 05, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. Electronic address: satinsky@faf.cuni.cz.

PMID: 37247455
DOI: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.124688

Abstract

A novel method for the extraction of river water contaminants as model analytes of ranging polarities, including bisphenols A, C, S, Z, fenoxycarb, kadethrin, and deltamethrin, using small compact fibrous disks has been developed and validated. Polymer nanofibers and microfibers prepared from poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), polypropylene, polyurethane, polyacrylonitrile, poly(lactic acid), and polycaprolactone doped with graphene were evaluated in terms of extraction efficiency, selectivity, and stability in organic solutions. Our novel extraction procedure comprised preconcentration of analytes from 150 mL river water to 1 mL of eluent using a compact nanofibrous disk freely vortexed in the sample. Small nanofibrous disks with a diameter of 10 mm were cut from a compact and mechanically stable 1-2 mm thick micro/nanofibrous sheet. After 60 min extraction in a magnetically stirred sample located in a beaker, the disk was removed from the liquid and washed with water. Then, the disk was inserted into a 1.5 mL HPLC vial and extracted with 1.0 ml methanol upon short intensive shaking. Our approach avoided the undesired problems related to the manual handling typical of "classical" SPE procedure since the extraction was carried out directly in the HPLC vial. No sample evaporation, reconstitution, or pipetting was required. The nanofibrous disk is affordable, needs no support or holder, and its use avoids creation of plastic waste originating from disposable materials. Recovery of compounds from the disks was 47.2-141.4% depending on the type of polymer used and the relative standard deviations calculated from 5 extractions ranged from 6.1 to 11.8% for poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), 6.3-14.8% for polyurethane, and 1.7-16.2% for polycaprolactone doped with graphene. A small enrichment factor was obtained for polar bisphenol S using all sorbents. A higher preconcentration reaching up to 40-fold was achieved for lipophilic compounds such as deltamethrin when using poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) and graphene-doped polycaprolactone.

Keywords: Contaminants; Extraction; Graphene; Microfibers; Nanofibers; Nanofibrous disk.