Abstract
Background: This work reports a green analytical method for the determination of organic environmental pollutants using nano-liquid chromatography with a self-made column for rapid, sensitive, inexpensive and efficient analysis of BTX pollutants in water. The applications of monolithic nano-scale columns for quantitative analysis of environmental real samples are very limited in the literature.
Methods: A capillary column containing a composite of multi-walled carbon nanotubes incorporated into a lauryl methacrylate-co-ethylene dimethacrylate porous monolithic polymer was fabricated for the determination of BTX pollutants in real water samples.
Results: Baseline separation was accomplished at 0.4 mu L/min flow rate with UV-detection set at 208 nm. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration curves were validated over the range of 1.0-500 mu g/L with R-2 more than 0.9992. The detection limits of benzene, toluene, o-xylene and m/p-xylene were 0.25, 0.05, 0.075 and 0.05 mu g/L, respectively. After a simple extraction process with a theoretical preconcentration factor equal to 200, the recovery values in Milli-Q, tap and sea water samples were found to be ranged from 84.85 to 97.84% with %RSD less than 7.5. Furthermore, we reported a comparison between our prepared composite column with a commercial C-18 silica based column which is the most used in such analytical field. Each column demonstrated its advantages from different analytical aspects.
Conclusion: The application of monolithic columns and nano-scale LC for routine analysis of environmental samples is very promising as the use of monolithic capillary columns offers several advantages over conventional scale particulate packed columns.