Magnetic microsphere-confined graphene for the extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from environmental water samples coupled with high performance liquid chromatography–fluorescence analysis

• A magnetic microsphere-confined graphene Fe3O4@SiO2-G was synthesized via chemical bonding.
• It was an efficient adsorbent for the pre-concentration of some PAHs from water sample.
• It was more stable and could be reused for more than 30 times.

In this paper, a magnetic microsphere-confined graphene adsorbent (Fe3O4@SiO2-G) was fabricated and used for the extraction of five polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (fluorene, anthracene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene and pyrene) from environmental water samples prior to high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. The Fe3O4@SiO2-G was characterized by various instrumental methods. Various experimental parameters that could affect the extraction efficiencies, such as the amount of Fe3O4@SiO2-G, the pH and ionic strength of sample solution, the extraction time and the desorption conditions, were investigated. Due to the high surface area and excellent adsorption capacity of the Fe3O4@SiO2-G, satisfactory extraction can be achieved with only 15 mg of the adsorbent per 250 mL solution and 5 min extraction. Under the optimum conditions, a linear response was observed in the concentration range of 5–1500 ng L−1 for fluorene, 2.5–1500 ng L−1 for anthracene and 15–1500 ng L−1 for phenanthrene, fluoranthene and pyrene, with the correlation coefficients (r) ranging from 0.9897 to 0.9961. The limits of detection (S/N = 3) of the method were between 0.5 and 5.0 ng L−1. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) were less than 5.6%. The recoveries of the method were in the range between 83.2% and 108.2%. The results indicated that this graphene-based magnetic nanocomposite had a great adsorptive ability toward the five polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from environmental water samples.