Eco-friendly Method for the Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Sediments by HS-SPME-GC/MS

This paper aimed to optimize a method for extraction of 26 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are petroleum markers, and their derivatives in surface sediment samples. The gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry detection with automated headspace solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME-GC/MS) was used in the studies. Extraction temperature, extraction time, stirring, sample mass, the volume of saline solution and sorption time were the factors optimized applying 2⁴ complete factorial and 2³ rotational central composed designs. The linear range of the calibration curve for each PAH was from 10 to 40 ng g⁻¹ and the Pearson correlations for all the compounds were above 0.98. The detection and quantification limits values ranged from 0.13 to 0.46 ng g⁻¹ dry weight and 0.42 to 1.52 ng g⁻¹ dry weight, respectively. The mean recoveries of the spiked samples ranged from 74 ± 16% (acenaphthylene) to 98 ± 5% (fluoranthene) and 84 ± 8% (retene) to 119 ± 6% (9-methylanthracene) for the spiked blanks. Sediment samples show the concentration of PAHs ranged from 0.55 ± 0.04 (naphthalene) to 17.4 ± 0.5 (pyrene) ng g⁻¹ based upon the dry weight.