Using multi-walled carbon nanotubes as solid phase extraction adsorbents to determine dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and its metabolites at trace level in water samples by high performance liquid chromatography with UV detection

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are a kind of new carbon-based nano-materials which have drawn great attention in many application fields. The potential of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) as solid-phase extraction (SPE) adsorbents for the preconcentration of environmental pollutants has been investigated in recent years. The goal of this work was to investigate the feasibility of MWNTs used as SPE adsorbents to enrich dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolites including 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis-(4′-chlorophenyl)ethane (DDD) and 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis-(4′-chlorophenyl)ethane (DDE) at trace level which are typical persistent organic pollutants in environment. Parameters that maybe influence the extraction efficiency such as the eluent volume, sample flow rate, sample pH and the sample volume were optimized in detail. The experimental results showed the excellent linear relationship between peak area and the concentration of DDT and its metabolites over the range of 0.2–60 μg L−1, and the precisions (RSD) were 2.3–2.5% under the optimal conditions. The detection limits of proposed method could reach 4–13 ng L−1 based on the ratio of chromatographic signal to base line noise (S/N = 3). Satisfied results were achieved when the proposed method was applied to determine the four target compounds in realworld water samples with spiked recoveries over the range of 89.7–115.5%. All these facts indicated that MWCNTs as SPE packing materials coupled to HPLC was an excellent alternative for the routine analysis of DDT and its metabolites at trace level in environment.