Determination of trace organophosphorus pesticides in water samples with TiO2 nanotubes cartridge prior to GC-flame photometric detection

This article described a new method for the sensitive determination of organophosphorus pesticides in water samples using SPE in combination with GC-flame photometric detection. In the procedure of method development, TiO2 nanotubes were used as SPE adsorbents for the enrichment of organophosphorus pesticides from water samples. Several factors, such as eluent and its volume, sample pH, sample volume, sample flow rate, and concentration of humic acid, were optimized. Under the optimal conditions, the proposed method had good linear ranges as 0.1-40 mu g/L for each of them, LOD of 0.11, 0.014, and 0.0025 mu g/L, and LOQs of 0.37, 0.047, and 0.0083 mu g/L for chlorpyrifos, phorate, and methyl parathion, respectively. The proposed method was validated with real environmental water samples and the spiked recoveries were over the range of 86.5-115.1%. All these results indicated that TiO2 nanotubes, as a new SPE adsorbent, would be used widespread for the preconcentraiton and determination of environmental pollutants in the future.