Solid-phase microextraction with a graphene-composite-coated fiber coupled with GC for the determination of some halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons in water samples

In this work, a graphene composite was coated onto etched stainless-steel wire through a sol-gel technique and it was used as a solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber. The prepared fiber was characterized by SEM, which revealed that the fiber had a highly porous structure. The application of the fiber was evaluated through the headspace SPME of five halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons (chlorobenzene, bromobenzene, 1,3-dichlorobenzene, 1,2-dichlorobenzene, and 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene) in water samples followed by GC with flame ionization detection. The main factors influencing the extraction efficiency, including headspace volume, extraction time, extraction temperature, stirring rate, ionic strength of sample solution, and desorption conditions, were studied and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, the linearity of the method ranged from 2.5 to 800.0 μg/L for 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene and from 2.5 to 500.0 μg/L for chlorobenzene, bromobenzene, 1,3-dichlorobenzene, and 1,2-dichlorobenzene, with the correlation coefficients (r) ranging from 0.9962 to 0.9980, respectively. The LODs (S/N = 3) of the method for the analytes were in the range between 0.5 and 1.0 μg/L. The recoveries of the method for the analytes obtained for the spiked water samples at 50.0 and 250.0 μg/L were from 76.0 to 104.0%.