A cost-effective approach utilizing a natural biosorbent phase for determining emerging contaminants in water through disposable pipette extraction

Abstract In this work, a novel cork powder-based biosorbent is applied and packed into a micropipette tip for the extraction of trace emerging contaminants prior to their detection by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The morphology and structure of adsorbent material was characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy the morphology and composition of the cork powder were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and N2 adsorption. The parameters including the amount of adsorbent, sampling volume, sampling rate, sample pH, and desorption solvent affected the extraction performance was systematically investigated by pipette tip solid-phase extraction (PT-SPE) coupled with HPLC analysis. Under the optimized condition, the linearity of this method ranged from 1 to 200 µg.mL-1 for compounds with determination coefficient higher than 0.96. The limit of detection (at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3) were in the range 0.38–0.83 µg.mL-1. The relative recoveries of the analytes from spiked samples ranged from 71.8–104.7%, with relative standard deviations less than 5.7%. The filled extraction tube exhibited good stability and reproducibility. The proposed method has been successfully used to detect compounds in water with satisfactory recoveries.