Trace analysis of herbicides in wastewaters by a dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction approach and liquid chromatography with quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometry: evaluation of green parameters

An analytical method for determining phenylureas (monuron, isoproturon, diuron, linuron and neburon) and propanil herbicides in wastewater has been developed and validated, and the most significant parameters were compared with the corresponding ones found in the literature, thus showing the method performance. The method involves pre-concentration by a simple, rapid, sensitive and low environmental toxicity temperature-controlled ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction procedure. The herbicides were identified and determined by liquid chromatography with a hybrid triple quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometer. Data acquisition in selected-reaction monitoring mode allowed the simultaneous identification and quantification of the analytes using two transitions. The information dependent acquisition scan was performed to carry out the identification of those analytes whose second transition was present at low intensity, also providing extra confirmation for the other analytes. Limits of quantification were in the range 1.0-5.0 ng/L. Good recoveries (95-103%) were obtained for the extraction of the target analytes in wastewater samples. The methodology developed was applied to analyze effluent wastewater samples from a wastewater treatment plant located in an agricultural zone of Almería (Spain) and the results indicated the presence of diuron at mean concentration levels of 73.5 ng/L.