Glass-Fiber Reinforced Poly(acrylate)-based Sorptive Materials for the Enrichment of Organic Micropollutants from Aqueous Samples

A novel and simple approach to sorptive extraction of organic compounds for environmental samples is presented. It consists in glass fiber fabric strips coated with a customised polyacrylate formulation used as extraction medium. The analytes are enriched during shaking, and then thermally desorbed and analyzed by GC-MS. Its performance is illustrated and evaluated for the enrichment of compounds with different polarities (phenols, hexachlorobenzene and hexachlorocyclohexanes) in water samples. Parameters that affect the extraction process were investigated, which included pH, ionic strength, mixing mechanism, extraction time and desorption conditions, such as temperature, time and helium flow rate. The extraction ability of this new extraction medium was compared with the commercial available polydimethylsiloxane twisters. The results reveal that the new material shows higher affinity for the phenolic compounds presumably due to the presence of polar groups. The partition coefficients determined in this work are up to 15 times greater for the PA strips than for PDMS twister, resulting in higher recoveries and lower detection limits. A natural ground water sample from Bitterfeld (Germany) was also extracted using both methods, showing good agreement. The established method was then applied to determine the studied compounds in contaminated surface water samples.JRC.F.8-Sustainable Transpor