Advanced polymer nanofibers for the online extraction coupled with liquid chromatography for the determination of emerging fluorinated contaminants in surface water

Abstract

Advanced polyacrylonitrile, polypropylene, polyhydroxybutyrate, polycaprolactone, and poly(vinylidene difluoride) nanofibers, including composite materials containing carbon nanoparticle additives, combined micro/nanofibers, and modified nanofibers with polyhydroxy coatings were filled into a cartridge and tested for the online solid phase extraction (SPE) of highly lipophilic and fluorinated organic contaminants. The reusable nanofiber-packed cartridge was coupled to an HPLC column to separate the analytes after direct elution. Electrospun poly(vinylidene difluoride) nanofibers embedded in a meltblown microfibrous polycaprolactone scaffold were sufficiently robust in a high-pressure SPE-HPLC system and the most efficient adsorbent for the selective extraction of fluorinated pesticides. The optimized and validated online solid-phase extraction method coupled with chromatographic separation demonstrated an excellent trueness of 93-108 % and precision of better than 3.2 % RSD with six replicates. The entire analysis run took only 7 min, including the preconcentration step with the direct application of a 200 μL sample volume. Since the method is fully automated, it significantly reduces time, solvent consumption, and the occurrence of human error. Our study highlights the potential of polymer nanofiber sorbents for the efficient environmental monitoring of emerging fluorinated contaminants and demonstrates a reliable, fully automated method for their determination.