Evaluation of Response Surface Methodology in Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction for Lead Determination Using Ionic Liquids

Abstract

This paper describes a dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) procedure using room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) coupled with flame atomic absorption spectrometry detection with microsample intro-duction system capable of quantifying trace amounts of lead. In the proposed approach, ammonium pyr-rolidine dithiocarbamate (APDC) was used as a chelating agent and 1-hexyl-3-methylimmidazolium bis (trifluormethylsulfonyl)imid as an extraction solvent was dissolved in acetone as the disperser solvent. The binary solution was then rapidly injected by a syringe into the water sample containing Pb2+ complex. Some factors influencing the extraction efficiency of Pb2+ and its subsequent determination, including extraction and dispersive solvent type, pH of sample solution, concentration of the chelating agent and salt effect were inspected by a full factorial design to identify important parameters and their interactions. Next, a central composite design was applied to obtain the optimum points of the important parameters. Under the optimum conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.2 µg/L. The relative standard deviation (R.S.D) was 1.4% for 5 µg/L of Pb2+ (n = 7). The relative recovery of lead in seawater, blood, tomato and black tea samples was measured.