Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction Based on Solidification of Floating Organic Drop with High Performance Liquid Chromatography for Determination of Decabrominated Diphenyl Ether in Surficial Sediments

A method for determination of decabrominated diphenyl ether (decaBDE), in sediment samples, at trace level has been developed using dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction based on the solidification of floating organic drop (DLLME-SFO) and high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV). The data obtained from an orthogonal array experiment were used as the training samples to establish a BP artificial neural network model for optimization of the experimental conditions with results as follows: 1.00 mL of methanol as dispersive solvent, 35.0 μL of dodecanol as extractive solvent, the mass concentration of NaCl was 10.00% at pH 5, and extraction time was 10 min. The extraction recovery (ER) of the present method was 62.22%, and the proposed method exhibited a wide linear range (3.5–1400 ng g−1) with R2 = 0.9921. The limit of detection (LOD) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) for this method were 2.3 pg g−1 (S/N = 2) and 5.6 pg g−1 (S/N = 5), respectively. The recoveries of real samples at different spiked levels of decaBDE ranged from 97.7% to 104.2%. Meanwhile, the pretreatment of DLLME-SFO for decaBDE from solid samples was simplified in this study as extraction, concentration, and separation procedures for decaBDE from the sediment sample could be carried out in a single step.