Evaluation of Response Surface Methodology in Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction for Lead Determination Using Ionic Liquids

This paper describes a dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) procedure using room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) coupled with flame atomic absorption spectrometry detection with microsample introduction system capable of quantifying trace amounts of lead. In the proposed approach, ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (APDC) was used as a chelating agent and 1-hexyl-3-methylimmidazolium bis (trifluormethylsulfonyl)imid as an extraction solvent was dissolved in acetone as the disperser solvent. The binary solution was then rapidly injected by a syringe into the water sample containing Pb complex. Some factors influencing the extraction efficiency of Pb and its subsequent determination, including extraction and dispersive solvent type, pH of sample solution, concentration of the chelating agent and salt effect were inspected by a full factorial design to identify important parameters and their interactions. Next, a central composite design was applied to obtain the optimum points of the important parameters. Under the optimum conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.2 μg/L. The relative standard deviation (R.S.D) was 1.4% for 5 μg/L of Pb (n = 7). The relative recovery of lead in seawater, blood, tomato and black tea samples was measured.