Second-order bilinear calibration for determining polycyclic aromatic compounds in marine sediments by solvent extraction and liquid chromatography with diode-array detection Original Research Article

A method based on solvent extraction followed by chromatographic separation with diode-array detection has been applied to determine polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in marine sediment samples. Because interfering substances coeluted with the compounds studied, second-order calibration using the Generalized Rank Annihilation Method (GRAM) was used for quantification. For calibration, a spiked sample was used instead of a standard solution because the complexity of the samples made us suspect the presence of matrix effect. With this method, the compounds do not need to be completely separated from the interferences and quantification can be carried out with only one spiked sample for calibration. Hence, the quantification process is shorter than the one based on univariate calibration. The ability of the method to quantify the studied compounds was evaluated by comparing the results with those of a univariate standard addition calibration, which involved the previous isolation of the analytes.