Simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of nitroaniline isomers after cloud point extraction by using least-squares support vector machines

Cloud point extraction has been used for the preconcentration of m-nitroaniline, o-nitroaniline and p-nitroaniline and later simultaneous spectrophotometric determination using polyethylene glycol tert-octylphenyl ether (Triton X-100) as surfactant. The resolution of a ternary mixture of the nitroaniline isomers (after extraction by cloud point) by the application of least-squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) was performed. The chemical parameters affecting the separation phase and detection process were studied and optimized. Under the optimum experimental conditions (i.e. pH 7.0, Triton X-100 = 0.6%, equilibrium time 20 min and cloud point 75 °C), calibration graphs were linear in the range of 0.2–20.0, 0.1–15.0 and 0.1–17.0 μg ml−1 with detection limits of 0.08, 0.05 and 0.06 μg ml−1 for m-nitroaniline, o-nitroaniline and p-nitroaniline, respectively. The experimental calibration matrix was designed with 21 mixtures of these chemicals. The concentrations were varied between calibration graphs concentrations of nitroaniline isomers. The root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) for m-nitroaniline, o-nitroaniline and p-nitroaniline were 0.0146, 0.0308 and 0.0304, respectively. This procedure allows the simultaneous determination of nitroaniline isomers in synthetic and real matrix samples good reliability of the determination was proved.