Design and development of second-generation fabric phase sorptive extraction membranes: Proof-of-concept for the extraction of organophosphorus pesticides from apple juice prior to GC-MS analysis

Abstract

In this work, different sol-gel sorbent-coated second-generation fabric phase sorptive extraction (FPSE) membranes were synthesized using titania-based sol-gel precursors. The proposed membranes were tested for their efficiency to extract eleven selected organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) from apple juice samples. Among the examined materials, sol-gel C18 coated titania-based FPSE membranes showed the highest extraction efficiency. These membranes were used for the optimization and validation of an FPSE method prior to analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The detection limits for OPPs ranged between 0.03 and 0.08 ng mL-1. Moreover, the relative standard deviation was < 8.2% and 8.4% for intra-day and inter-day studies, respectively. The relative recoveries were 91-110% (intra-day study) and 90-106% (inter-day study) for all the target analytes, demonstrating good overall method accuracy. Moreover, the novel membranes were reusable at least 5 times. The titania-based membranes were compared to the conventional silica-based membranes and their utilization resulted in higher extraction recoveries.