Analysis of sulfonamides in soil, sediment, and sludge based on dynamic microwave-assisted micellar extraction

Abstract

A green and high-throughput analytical method was described for the simultaneous determination of ten sulfonamides (SAs) from soil, sediment, and sludge in northeast China. None of potentially hazardous organic solvents was used in the whole sample preparation procedure, and the total preparation time of 15 samples was about 18 min. The limits of detection for the SAs were in the range of 0.42-0.68 ng g(-1). The intra-day and inter-day precisions, expressed by the relative standard deviation, were below 7 %. Under the optimum conditions, the recoveries of ten SAs were between 69.7 and 102.7 %. The proposed method was successfully applied to analyze the SAs residues in agricultural soils, river sediments, and sewage sludge. SAs were found at the levels of 1.40-2.31 ng g(-1) and 3.77-29.29 ng g(-1) in the sediments and sludge, respectively. The aging effect of spiked soil samples on the SAs recoveries was examined, and the results demonstrate that eight SAs could persist in five soils for 3 months. Compared with the traditional method, the proposed method could reduce the consumption of the organic solvent, shorten the sample preparation time, and increase the sample throughput.

Keywords: Dynamic microwave-assisted micellar extraction; High performance liquid chromatography; High-throughput; Sediment; Sludge; Soil; Sulfonamides.