Sensitivity enhancement in the fluorometric determination of aliphatic amines using naphthalene-2,3-dicarboxaldehyde derivatization followed by vortex-assisted liquid–liquid microextraction

Abstract A highly sensitive liquid chromatographic method was developed for the fluorometric determination of trace amounts of linear aliphatic primary amines. Prior to extraction, amines were derivatized with naphthalene-2,3-dicarboxaldehyde (NDA) in the presence of cyanide ion (CN) and extracted by vortex-assisted liquid–liquid microextraction (VALLME). The optimum conditions were as follows: derivatization reaction time for 5 min in 2.0 mL aqueous donor samples with 50 μM NDA/CN, and 10 mM borate buffer at pH 9; vortex extraction time for 20 s in the VALLME step with 50 μL of isooctane as the extractant phase; centrifugation for 1 min at 6000 rpm. Under the optimum conditions, the limits of detection (LOD) were between 0.01 and 0.04 nmol L −1 . The calibration curves showed good linearity in the range of 0.1–20 nmol L −1 . In comparison with previous work using o-phthalaldehyde/2-mercaptoethanol derivatization, the method has much more stable fluorescent derivatives, higher fluorescence intensities, and greater extraction efficiencies. The sensitivity enhancement factors (SEF) were between 2 and 70, which is in good agreement with the theoretical values calculated from partition coefficients in VALLME system.