Medium-assisted non-polar solvent dynamic microwave extraction for determination of organophosphorus pesticides in cereals using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

• A MA-NPS-DME system was assembled for determination of OPPs in cereals.
• A microwave extractor was made and used to heat samples directly.
• The microwave extractor can be reused.
• The MAM can be recycled and was not in contact with the samples.
• Only non-polar solvent was applied to the extraction of OPPs.

A fast and green pretreatment method, medium-assisted non-polar solvent dynamic microwave extraction, was first applied to extract ten of organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) from five cereal samples. Without adding any polar solvent, graphite powders (GP) were used as microwave absorption medium to transform microwave energy into heat energy. For recycling GP, an extractor was made by sealing GP inside the exterior tube of a glass sleeve. By dynamic microwave extraction using hexane as extraction solvent, ten OPPs could be extracted completely within 200 s, and the extract was directly analysed by GC–MS without any clean-up process. The effects of some experimental parameters on extraction efficiency were investigated and optimised. Relative standard deviations of intra- and inter-day ranging from 1.02% to 5.32% were obtained. Five real samples were analysed, and the recoveries obtained were in the range of 73.2–99.8%, and the relative standard deviations were lower than 6.63%.