Solid‐phase extraction of pesticides from surface water using discs, bulk sorbents and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE)

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Abstract
Extraction of pesticides from river water samples using the classical liquid‐liquid extraction (LLE) approach is a labour‐intensive procedure that requires relatively large volumes of solvent. With the solid‐phase extraction (SPE) technique using membranes, the volumes of solvent are reduced. However, it is necessary to pre‐filter and often also to acidify the river water to pH < 2 to prevent plugging of the capillary pores. This low pH may decompose some pesticides and therefore a fast and inexpensive technique with bulk sorbent and without prefiltration and acidification was developed.To reduce the solvent volumes further, extractions of discs and bulk sorbent were performed with supercritical fluids (SF). Seven pesticides with different polarities were studied. Mean recoveries from the bulk sorbent and the discs were of the same order (61%). However, recoveries from the latter improved to 82% with SFE of the discs, providing results comparable to LLE (94%) recovery.