Solid-phase extraction and simultaneous determination of trace amounts of sulphonated and azo sulphonated dyes using microemulsion-modified-zeolite and multivariate calibration

A simple and rapid analytical method for the determination of trace levels of five sulphonated and azo sulphonated reactive dyes: Cibacron Reactive Blue 2 (C-Blue, trisulphonated dye), Cibacron Reactive Red 4 (C-Red, tetrasulphonated azo dye), Cibacron Reactive Yellow 2 (C-Yellow, trisulphonated azo dye), Levafix Brilliant Red E-4BA (L-Red, trisulphonated dye), and Levafix Brilliant Blue E-4BA (L-Blue, disulphonated dye) in water is presented. Initially, the dyes were preconcentrated from 250 ml of water samples with solid-phase extraction using natural zeolite sample previously modified with a microemulsion. The modified zeolite exhibited an excellent extraction for the dyes from solution. The parameters that influence quantitative recovery of reactive dyes like amount of extractant, volume of dye solution, pH, ionic strength, and extraction–elution flow rate were varied and optimized. After elution of the adsorbed dyes, the concentration of dyes was determined spectrophotometrically with the aid of principle component regression (PCR) method without separation of dyes. The results obtained from PCR method were comparable to those obtained from HPLC method confirming the effectiveness of the proposed method. With the aid of SPE by M-zeolite, the concentration of dyes could be reproducibly detected over the range 25–200 ppb for C-Yellow and L-Blue and from 50 to 250 ppb for C-Blue, C-Red, and L-Red. The multivariate detection limits of dyes were found to be 15 ppb for C-Yellow and L-Blue and 25 ppb for C-Blue, C-Red, and L-Red dyes. The proposed chemometric method gave recoveries from 85.4 to 115.3% and R.S.D. from 1.0 to 14.5% for determination of the five dyes without any prior separation for solutes.