A novel application of nylon membranes for tributyltin determination in complex environmental samples by fluorescence spectroscopy and multivariate calibration

•New simple and fast method for tributyltin determination in sediments and waters.•Multivariate calibration coupled to luminescence was applied satisfactorily.•Retention on nylon membrane of tributyltin derivative increases luminescent signals.

The widely distributed pollutant tributyltin (TBT) was analyzed in different environmental samples (waters and sediments) combining preconcentration on a nylon membrane, excitation–emission fluorescence matrices directly measured over the membrane and second-order multivariate calibration. The latter was implemented using unfolded partial least-squares with residual bilinearization (U-PLS/RBL), a flexible algorithm achieving second-order advantage, even under severe spectral overlapping among sample components. Matrix-specific calibrations were required to overcome matrix effects, resulting in good analytical performance. TBT was determined in the concentration ranges 0.043–1.42 ng Sn mL− 1 in water and 24–400 μg Sn kg− 1 in sediments, with adequate detection limits in the range 0.03–0.15 ng Sn mL− 1.