Combination of liquid-phase hollow fiber membrane microextraction with gas chromatography-negative chemical ionization mass spectrometry for the determination of dichlorophenol isomers in water and urine

A method for the determination of trace amount of dichlorophenol isomers in urine samples using the combination of liquid-phase hollow fiber microextraction (LPME-HF) with gas chromatography-negative chemical ionization mass spectrometry (GC-NCI-MS) has been demonstrated. The method has been optimized with respect to several parameters including the effects of negative chemical ionization (NCI) reagent pressure, the hollow fiber length, extraction time, stirring rate, sample pH and salt concentration for the determination of dichlorophenol isomers in water. The correlation coefficient (r2) of the calibration curves for 2,5-dichlorophenol, 2,3-dichlorophenol, 2,6-dichlorophenol, 3,5-dichlorophenol and 3,4-dichlorophenol were 0.988, 0.981, 0.985, 0.971 and 0.994, respectively. The average recovery rates for 2,5-dichlorophenol, 2,3-dichlorophenol, 2,6-dichlorophenol, 3,5-dichlorophenol and 3,4-dichlorophenol were 0.97, 0.93, 0.96, 0.95 and 0.95, respectively (n = 3 for each dichlorophenol) indicate that the methodology is feasible for the determination of trace amounts of dichlorophenol isomers in water and urine samples. Limits of detection (LOD) have been found to be in the range of 5-20 ng/ml. In addition, differentiation of the five dichlorophenol isomers is an easy task using the current approach of combining LPME-HF with NCI-GC-MS technique since they exhibit different NCI spectra.