Ionic Liquid-based Ultrasound-assisted In-situ Solvent Formation Microextraction and High-performance Liquid Chromatography for the Trace Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Environmental Water Samples

A green and efficient ionic liquid-based ultrasound-assisted in-situ solvent formationmicroextraction (IL-UA-ISFME) in combination with high-performance liquid chromatographyultravioletdetection (HPLC-UV) has been successfully developed for the trace determination offive selected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in environmental water samples. In thismethod, a hydrophobic ionic liquid (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate) wasformed by addition of a hydrophilic ionic liquid (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate) tosample solution containing an ion-pairing agent (NaPF6). The analytes were extracted into the ionicliquid phase while the microextraction solvent was dispersed through the sample by utilizingultrasonic radiation. The sample was then centrifuged and extracting phase retracted into themicrosyringe, diluted with acetonitrile, and injected to HPLC. In the beginning, effectiveparameters controlling the performance of the microextraction process were studied in detail andoptimized. The limit of detections (LOD, S/N = 3) were in the range of 0.32-0.79 μg L-1 while theRSD% values were below than 5.2% (n = 6). A good linearity (0.997 ≥ r2 ≥ 0.992) and a broadlinear over the concentration ranges from 1 to 500 μg L-1 were achieved. The method wasultimately applied for the preconcentration and sensitive determination of the PAHs in severalenvironmental water samples. The accuracy of the method in the real samples was tested by the relative recovery experiments with results ranging from 90-106%, which confirmed thatcomplicated matrixes had almost little effect on the developed analytical procedure.