Cost-efficientmagnetic nanoporous carbon derived from citrus peel for the selective adsorption of seven insecticides

A magnetic solid-phase extraction adsorbent that consisted of citrus peel-derived nanoporous carbon and silica-coated Fe3O4 microspheres (C/SiO2@Fe3O4) was successfully fabricated by co-precipitation. As a modifier for magnetic microspheres, citrus peel-derived nanoporous carbon was not only economical and renewable for its raw material, but exerted enormous nanosized pore structure, which could directly influence the type of adsorbed analytes. The C/SiO2@Fe3O4 also possessed the advantages of Fe3O4 microspheres like superparamagnetism, which could be easily separated magnetically after adsorption. Integrating the superior of biomass-derived nanoporous carbon and Fe3O4 microspheres, the as-prepared C/SiO2@Fe3O4 showed high extraction efficiency for target analytes. The obtained material was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller method, which demonstrated that C/SiO2@Fe3O4 was successfully synthesized. Under the optimal conditions, the adsorbent was selected for the selective adsorption of seven insecticides before gas chromatography with mass spectrometry detection, and good linearity was obtained in the concentration range of 2-200g/kg with the correlation coefficient ranging from 0.9952 to 0.9997. The limits of detection were in the range of 0.03-0.39g/kg. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the enrichment and detection of seven insecticides in real vegetable samples.