Low volume liquid-liquid extraction for the determination of benzene, toluene, and xylene in water by GC-FID and HPLC-UV

Abstract

A simple sample preparation method based on green analytical chemistry was proposed to measure benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX) in water. The method implemented low volume liquid-liquid extraction for extraction of BTX from water using acetonitrile without any solid phase extraction (SPE) clean-up to cut the chemical consumption during the sample preparation. The quantification of BTX was done by GC-FID and HPLC-UV for comparison. The result showed that the method in combination with GC-FID was able to detect toluene and xylene in spiked water samples below the limit regulated by Ministry of Health of Indonesia (MRL toluene=0.7 mg/L; MRL xylene 0.5 mg/L) but not for benzene (MRL benzene=0.01 mg/L).