Multiple headspace single-drop microextraction—a new technique for quantitative determination of styrene in polystyrene

Single-drop microextraction (SDME), an emerging miniaturised extraction technique, was for the first time combined with multiple headspace extraction (MHE) to enable the quantitative determination of volatiles in solid matrixes by SDME technique. The concept of multiple headspace single-drop microextraction (MHS-SDME) was then applied for quantitative determination of styrene in polystyrene (PS) samples. Good linearity for the multiple headspace extraction was obtained when the migration of styrene was facilitated by grinding the samples and incubating them for 1 h at 150 °C prior the first extraction. Two microlitres of butyl acetate was used as the single-drop microextraction solvent and the extraction time was 5 min per cycle. The relative standard deviation (RSD) for single-drop microextraction of styrene standard at n = 6 was 7.6%. Linearity was shown for styrene concentrations between 0.005 and 0.75 μg/ml (R2 = 0.999). This corresponds to total amount of styrene between 0.1 and 15 μg. The limit of quantitation for styrene standard at S/N 10 was 0.005 μg/ml. The developed method was validated against and showed good agreement with an earlier reported dissolution–precipitation method.