Determination of phthalate esters in water by headspace solid phase microextraction using covalent organic framework-based nanocomposite as advanced coating coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry detector

Phthalate esters (PEs) are a class of synthetic chemicals which have been used on a large scale since the 1950s, comprise a large number of compounds, and now are frequently used in plastic production industries to enhance the flexibility of the materials. Several phthalates have been identified and classified as endocrine disruptors possibly associated with known estrogenic and anti-androgenic activity [1].Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a new type of porous materials purely constructed with organic building blocks [2]. Characteristic in tunable functionality, regular pore structure, and high surface area make COFs as useful adsorbent in microextraction techniques.In the present work, COF nanocomposite was coated on etched stainless steel and evaluated as a novel headspace solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) fiber coating for extraction of ultra-trace amounts of PEs. Determination of FEs were performed by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectroscopy (GC-MS). Important parameters which have effect on extraction efficiency such as extraction time, extraction temperature, salt concentration, and stirring rate were optimized. To evaluation of the method performance the extraction of the PEs, limit of detection (LOD), linear range (LR), coefficient of determination (R2), relative standard deviation (RSD), and extraction efficiency (EE) were studied in distilled water under optimum extraction conditions. The obtained relative recoveries show this procedure is a reliable method for extraction and determination of PEs in water.