Novel bionanomaterial based on Spirulina maxima algae and graphene oxide for lead microextraction and determination in water and infant beverages

Abstract

A new hybrid bionanomaterial composed of graphene oxide (GO) and Spirulina maxima (SM) algae was synthesized and applied to develop a preconcentration method based on the dispersive micro-solid phase extraction (D-μ-SPE) technique for the determination of Pb in water and infant beverages. In this work, Pb(II) was extracted with 3 mg of the hybrid bionanomaterial (GO@SM) followed by a back-extraction step using 500 µL of 0.6 mol L^-1 HCl. Then, a 1.5 × 10^-3 mol L^-1 dithizone solution was added to the sample containing the analyte to form a purplish red-colored complex for its detection by UV-Vis spectrophotometry at 553 nm. An extraction efficiency of 98% was obtained after optimization of experimental variables such as GO@SM mass, pH, sample volume, type, and time of agitation. A detection limit of 1 μg L^-1 and a relative standard deviation of 3.5% (at 5 μg L^-1 Pb(II), n = 10) were achieved. The calibration linear range was obtained between 3.3 and 95 µg L^-1 Pb(II). The proposed method was successfully applied for the preconcentration and determination of Pb(II) in infant beverages. Finally, the greenness degree of the D-µ-SPE method was evaluated using the Analytical GREEnness calculator (AGREE), obtaining a score of 0.62.

Keywords: Algae; Beverages; Bionanomaterial; Graphene oxide; Lead; Preconcentration.