Water analysis of the sixteen environmental protection agency—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons via solid-phase nanoextraction-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

• PAHs are extracted from water samples with 100 micro-liters of organic solvent.
• Including GC/MS, total analysis time takes approximately 25 min per sample.
• Limits of detection are at the parts-per-trillion concentration level.

The growing concern with a sustainable environment poses a new challenge to analytical chemists facing the routine monitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in water samples. The new method presented here meets several features of green analytical chemistry. PAHs are extracted from 500 μL of water sample with 1 mL of a gold nanoparticles aqueous solution and released with 100 μL of organic solvents for subsequent analysis via gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The relative standard deviations of the overall procedure ranged from 2.4 (acenaphthene) to 7.8% (dibenz[a,h]anthracene). The limits of detection were excellent as well and varied from 4.94 (fluoranthene) to 65.5 ng L−1 (fluorene). The excellent analytical figures of merit, the simplicity of the experimental procedure, the short analysis time and the reduced solvent consumption demonstrate the potential of this approach for the routine monitoring of the sixteen priority pollutants via and environmentally friendly methodology.