Development of a Method for the Determination of Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons by New Generation Green Micro Extraction Techniques
Project no. 23453 · Status: Kapanmış · 2022
Summary
<p>The continuous increase in the production and use of electronic equipment containing plastic materials in recent years has caused people to be exposed to some organic pollutants as a result of contact with this equipment, especially in the home environment. The most important organic pollutants are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds. PAHs are toxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic chemicals among the pollutants of concern, many of which are persistent, bioaccumulative chemicals. For this reason, products to be supplied to the public and on the market containing PAHs are subject to a certain PAH limit value according to the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation. The defined threshold limits are 0.5 mg kg-1 for children's products and 1.0 mg kg-1 for all other consumer products. Therefore, it is necessary to develop sensitive methods to detect PAH contamination in equipment.</p><p> The standard method used in laboratories to perform this analysis is the liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) technique. In this sample preparation technique, the sample is directly treated with a large volume of toxic solvent without any precipitation step. Nowadays, it is possible to find many studies on developing more environmentally friendly, green, precipitation step-free, and rapid sample preparation techniques.</p><p> This project aims to develop a new microextraction technique for the sensitive and selective analysis of polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) residues. For this purpose, the dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) technique, which is frequently used as a green extraction technique today, was used in the project. The experiments were carried out using gas chromatography with a mass detector (GC-MS). This extraction method applied within the scope of the project is especially useful in the analysis of organic pollutants found in electronic equipment.</p>