Trace determination of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and its main metabolites in environmental water samples with dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction in combination with high performance liquid chromatography and ultraviolet detector

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane,1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane (DDT) and its main metabolites have been paid much more attention, and present paper describes a new process for the rapid determination of such pollutants in environmental water samples based on dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) and high performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detector, which has merits such as high enrichment factor and sensitivity, low cost and easy to operate. Significant parameters such as extraction solvent and dispersive solvent type and volume, pH, extraction time and centrifuging time, which would have important impact on the enrichment of target pollutants, have been investigated in detail. The results exhibited that excellent performance could be achieved with carbon tetrachloride and acetonitrile as the extraction solvent and dispersive solvent, respectively. Under the optimal conditions, excellent linear relationship was gained in the range of 1.0–50 μg L−1, and detection limits were in the range of 0.32–0.51 μg L−1. The precisions of the proposed method were in the range of 2.80–7.50% (RSD). The proposed method was validated with real water samples, and the results indicated the spiked recoveries were in the range of 85.58–119.6% and the established method was very good and competitive in the determination of DDT and its metabolites.