Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Sediment by High Performance Liquid Chromatography Following Vortex-Assisted Extraction Combined with Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction

A simple and rapid method, vortex-assisted extraction ( VAE) followed by dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) has been developed for the extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in sediment samples prior to analysis by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-fluorescence detection (FLD). Effects of significant parameters, such as type and volume of extraction and disperser solvent, extraction time, salt content and pH value, were optimized. Under the optimum conditions, the limits of detection (LODs) ranged from 2.3 to 6.8 ng/g, the linearity ranged from 10 to 2100 ng/g, coefficients of determinations (R-2) ranged from 0.9986 to 0.9994. The average recoveries of PAHs in sediment samples spiking with 3 different concentration levels were 85.2%+ 4. 7%, 85.0%+5.0% and 85.0%+5.1%, respectively, and the relative standard deviations were 5.7%, 6.1% and 5.7%, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied in analysis of real nature sediment samples. PAHs were detected in all real nature sediment samples collecting from 3 different depths, the average amount in sediment samples were 73.3, 49.8 and 28.3 ng/g, respectively and the average recoveries was 84.8%+/- 4.8%, 83.1%+/- 4.7% and 84.6%+/- 4.6%, respectively.