Simultaneous determination of five commercial cationic dyes in stream waters using diatomite solid-phase extractant and multivariate calibration

A simple spectrophotometric method was developed for the simultaneous determination of five commercial cationic dyes at 2.0−8.5 μg L−1 level after using diatomite as solid-phase extractant. The method is based on preconcentration of the five dyes on natural diatomite solid-phase extractant and on multivariate calibration using partial least squares method (PLS-1). Compared with commonly used chromatographic or electrophoretic methods the developed method is simple and sensitive. With enrichment factors between 89 and 96, diatomite outperformed zeolite and activated carbon for dyes preconcentration. Before preconcentration and using PLS-1 method, the cationic dyes were simultaneously analyzed with linear ranges of 0.18–4.5, 0.32–5.0, 0.23–4.5, 0.45–8.0 and 0.82–12.0 mg L−1 for crystal violet, malachite green, methylene blue, safranine O, and thioflavin T, respectively. The detection limits of dyes were estimated using Lorber’s method and found to be within the range 43–245 μg L−1. The proposed SPE/PLS-1 method was applied to spiked stream water samples with good accuracy (79–91%) and precision (RSD 1.8–7.3%) but with slightly lower enrichment factors (80–92).