Simultaneous Spectrophotometric Determination of Some Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Using Salting-Out Assisted Liquid-Liquid Extraction Coupled with Doolittle Multivariate Calibration Algorithm

Simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in wastewater samples after preconcentration by salting-out assisted liquid-liquid extraction was achieved using a doolittle multivariate calibration algorithm (DMCA). The DMCA was applied by lower and upper (LU) triangular matrix decomposition which is efficient, powerful and easily. Results were shown that DMCA has advantages such as, simplicity, rapidness, avoiding matrix inverting and reducing the orders of matrices. The influence of various parameters, such as extraction solvent and volume, type and amount of salt, vortex time and sample pH were studied and optimized. The net analyte signal (NAS) method was used for calculating figures of merit. Linear range (LR) of calibration graphs for naphthalene, anthracene and pyrene were between 0.20 - 2.00, 0.10 - 1.50 and 0.07 -1.00 µg mL^-1, respectively. The root mean square errors of prediction (RMSEP) for naphthalene, anthracene and pyrene using DMCA model were 0.0367, 0.0331 and 0.0305, respectively.