Determination of triazole fungicides in environmental water samples by high performance liquid chromatography with cloud point extraction using polyethylene glycol 600 monooleate

A preconcentration technique known as cloud point extraction was developed for the determination of trace levels of triazole fungicides tricyclazole, triadimefon, tebuconazole and diniconazole in environmental waters. The triazole fungicides were extracted and preconcentrated using polyethylene glycol 600 monooleate (PEG600MO) as a low toxic and environmentally benign nonionic surfactant, and determined by high performance liquid chromatography/ultraviolet detection (HPLC–UV). The extraction conditions were optimized for the four triazole fungicides as follows: 2.0 wt% PEG600MO, 2.5 wt% Na2SO4, equilibration at 45 °C for 10 min, and centrifugation at 2000 rpm (533 × g) for 5 min. The triazole fungicides were well separated on a reversed-phase kromasil ODS C18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) with gradient elution at ambient temperature and detected at 225 nm. The calibration range was 0.05–20 μg L−1 for tricyclazole and 0.5–20 μg L−1 for the other three classes of analytes with the correlation coefficients over 0.9992. Preconcentration factors were higher than 60-fold for the four selected fungicides. The limits of detection were 6.8–34.5 ng L−1 (S/N = 3) and the recoveries were 82.0–96.0% with the relative standard deviations of 2.8–7.8%.