On-site and quantitative SERS detection of trace 1, 2, 3-benzotriazole in transformer oil with colloidal lignin particles-based green pretreatment reagents

Yao Shen; Dong Yu; Fang-Yuan Han; Ai-Guo Shen; Ji-Ming Hu

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2021.119469

On-site and quantitative SERS detection of trace 1, 2, 3-benzotriazole in transformer oil with colloidal lignin particles-based green pretreatment reagents

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2021 May 5:252:119469. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119469. Epub 2021 Jan 15.

Authors

Yao Shen¹, Dong Yu², Fang-Yuan Han³, Ai-Guo Shen⁴, Ji-Ming Hu⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, PR China; School of Printing and Packaging, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, PR China.
² College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, PR China.
³ Electric Power Research Institute, Guangxi Power Grid Co., Ltd., Nanning 530023, PR China.
⁴ School of Printing and Packaging, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, PR China. Electronic address: agshen@whu.edu.cn.
⁵ College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, PR China. Electronic address: jmhu@whu.edu.cn.

PMID: 33530031
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119469

Abstract

Since 1, 2, 3-Benzotriazole (BTA) is one of the most commonly used metal passivators in transformer oil, on-site and quantitative detection of BTA plays a significant role in fast evaluation of the performance of the insulating oil. Herein, we proposed a cycle-growth synthetic protocol for yielding two-dimensional (2D) plane-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates with tunable optical property and controllable interparticle distance, and an extraction material, so called colloidal lignin particles (CLPs), for the fast separation of BTA from oil matrix. After BTA from transformer oil were adsorbed by hydrophilic CLPs, highly reproducible SERS signal of BTA can be obtained by dropping on the substrate. The characteristic Raman shift at 1386 cm^-1 of BTA has been selected to establish a good linearity between its relative intensity and concentration in the range of 1-300 mg/L, and the detection limit for BTA was down to 0.12 mg/L. Moreover, the time consumption for the whole detection process of real sample including sample pretreatment and SERS measurements was less than 30 min. It is highly expected that the combination of CLPs with SERS can accomplish the on-site detection of trace BTA in transformer oil.

Keywords: Benzotriazole (BTA); Colloidal lignin particles (CLPs); Sample pretreatment; Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS); Transformer oil.