Determination of Prometryne in water and soil by HPLC–UV using cloud-point extraction

A CPE-HPLC (UV) method has been developed for the determination of Prometryne. In this method, non-ionic surfactant Triton X-114 was first used to extract and pre-concentrate Prometryne from water and soil samples. The separation and determination of Prometryne were then carried out in an HPLC–UV system with isocratic elution using a detector set at 254 nm wavelength. The parameters and variables that affected the extraction were also investigated and the optimal conditions were found to be 0.5% of Triton X-114 (w/v), 3% of NaCl (w/v) and heat-assisted at 50 °C for 30 min. Using these conditions, the recovery rates of Prometryne ranged from 92.84% to 99.23% in water and 85.48% to 93.67% in soil, respectively, with all the relative standard deviations less than 3.05%. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were 3.5 μg L−1 and 11.0 μg L−1 in water and 4.0 μg kg−1 and 13.0 μg kg−1 in soil, respectively. Thus, we developed a method that has proven to be an efficient, green, rapid and inexpensive approach for extraction and determination of Prometryne from soil samples.