Rapid screening of haloacetamides in water using salt-assisted liquid–liquid extraction coupled injection-port silylation gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

• Published in: Journal of Chromatography A Vol. 1422; pp. 340 - 344
• Main Authors: Chen, Tzu-Ling, Tzing, Shin-Hwa, Ding, Wang-Hsien
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 27.11.2015
• Subjects: Acetamides - analysis; Environmental Monitoring - methods; Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; GC–MS; Haloacetamides; Limit of Detection; Liquid-Liquid Extraction; Nitrogen - analysis; Nitrogenous disinfection by-products; Salt-assisted liquid–liquid extraction; Sodium Chloride - chemistry; Sulfates - chemistry; Water - chemistry; Water analysis; Water Pollutants, Chemical - analysis; GC–MS; Nitrogenous disinfection by-products; Water analysis; Salt-assisted liquid–liquid extraction; Haloacetamides
• ISSN: 0021-9673; 1873-3778
• DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2015.10.047

•SALLE coupled injection-port silylation GC–MS was successfully used to analyze haloacetamides.•This method rapidly determined haloacetamides in drinking and swimming pool water.•The method provides good precision and detection limits at the sub-μg/L level.•It is an eco-friendly method for the proposed green sample preparation technique. The rapid screening of trace amounts of the nitrogenous disinfection by-products, haloacetamides (HAcAms), in drinking and swimming pool water was performed by a simple and reliable procedure based on salt-assisted liquid–liquid extraction (SALLE) combined with injection-port silylation gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (IPS-GC-MS) method. The optimal SALLE conditions involved the injection of 4-mL of ethyl acetate into a 10-mL water sample (pH 7) containing 3-g of sodium sulfate. After vortex extraction for 1min and centrifugation, 10μL of the extract (mixed with 1μL of MTBSTFA) was directly determined by IPS-GC-MS. The limits of quantitation (LOQs) were determined to be 0.03–0.3μg/L. Precision, as indicated by relative standard deviations (RSDs), was less than 10% for both intra- and inter-day analysis. Accuracy, expressed as the mean extraction recovery, was between 76% and 94%. The SALLE plus IPS-GC-MS was successfully applied to quantitatively determine HAcAms from drinking and swimming pool water samples, and the total concentrations of the compounds ranged from 0.43 to 4.03μg/L.