Evaluation of extraction techniques for the determination of butyltin compounds in sediments using isotope dilution-GC/ICPMS with 118Sn and 119Sn-enriched species.

Different liquid-solid extraction techniques, including room-temperature leaching with mechanical shaking, ultrasonic, and microwave-assisted extractions, have been evaluated for the quantitative speciation of tin for mono-, di-, and tributyltin (MBT, DBT, and TBT, respectively) in PACS-2 and BCR-646 certified reference materials. A methanol-acetic acid mixture was used as the extractant reagent in all cases. For this purpose, a mixed spike containing 119Sn-enriched MBT (79.7 At%), 118Sn-enriched DBT (86.7 At%), and 119Sn-enriched TBT (83.1 At%), was synthesized, characterized, and used for isotope dilution analysis. The isotopic composition of the mixed spike was determined by gas chromatography/ICPMS after aqueous ethylation using sodium tetraethylborate, and the determination of the concentration of the different species in the spike was performed by means of reverse isotope-dilution analysis using natural MBT, DBT, and TBT standards. In the analysis of the certified sediments, the sample was spiked with the mixed spike, extracted under different conditions, derivatized with sodium tetraethylborate, and extracted into hexane, and the isotope ratios 120/118 and 120/119 were measured as peak area ratios for all butyltin species after GC/ICPMS. Mass bias was corrected using a derivatized natural standard every three sample injections. Sequential degradation reactions during extraction (from TBT to DBT, from DBT to MBT, and from MBT to inorganic tin) were assumed, and mathematical equations were developed that allowed the determination of the correct species concentration and the decomposition factor for each of the transformation reactions. For ultrasonic extraction and mechanical shaking, negligible degradation reactions were observed. However, for microwave assisted extractions, degradation factors up to 7% (TBT to DBT) and 16% (DBT to MBT) were obtained for both reference materials when high-MW energy was applied in the extraction step. For the three extraction techniques tested, the DBT and TBT concentration values obtained for PACS-2 closely matched the certified values. However, for MBT the concentrations found by microwave and ultrasonic extraction were much higher than the certified value. This was not the case for mechanical shaking. The results obtained for BCR-646 using microwave assisted extraction were in good agreement with the certified values for all tin species.