Determination of polychlorinated biphenyls in surface water using solid phase extraction with pyrenebutyric acid bonded silica and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

In this paper, a kind of solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridge was prepared using pyrenebutyric acid-bonded silica (PYB) as sorbent. The concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in surface water were concentrated by these new SPE cartridges (PYB-SPE) and determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Some factors including elution solvent, pH, and cartridge burden were investigated in SPE procedures. The results showed that the recoveries of PCBs detected were 70.42-110.51% under optimized conditions. And the performance of PYB-SPE method was similar with the United States Environmental Protection Agency 608 (USEPA608) method and better than C₁₈-SPE method. The recoveries of PCB congeners determined by PYB-SPE method ranged from 73.9-96.5% in real spiked water samples which were identified to be in accordance with USEPA608 method. The developed PYB-SPE method was successfully applied to the determination of PCBs in water samples.