Hollow fiber-based liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME) for a highly sensitive HPLC determination of sulfonamides and their main metabolites

In this paper, three phase-hollow fiber-based liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME) combined with a HPLC procedure using diode array (DAD) and fluorescence detection (FLD) has been developed for the determination of four widely used sulfonamides: sulfadiazine, sulfamerazine, sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxazole and their main metabolites, the corresponding N4-acetyl derivatives: N4-acetyl-sulfadiazine, N4-acetyl-sulfamerazine, N4-acetyl-sulfamethazine, N4-acetyl-sulfamethoxazole. A Q3/2 Accurel KM polypropylene hollow fiber supporting 1-octanol was used between a 2 M Na2SO4 aqueous solution (pH 4) as a donor phase and aqueous solution (pH 12) as an acceptor phase. The procedure allows very low detection and quantitation limits of 0.3–33 ng L−1 and 0.9–100 ng L−1, respectively. The proposed method was applied to the determination of the analytes in environmental water samples (surface, tap and wastewater).