Vortex-assisted surfactant-enhanced-emulsification liquid-liquid microextraction for the determination of triazine herbicides in water samples by microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography.

A novel method based on the combination of microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) and vortex-assisted surfactant-enhanced-emulsification liquid-liquid microextraction (VSLLME) was developed for the determination of five triazine herbicides (simazine, atrazine, ametryn, prometryn, and terbutryn) in water samples. The five triazine herbicides were baseline separated by using the microemulsion buffer containing a 10 mmol/L borate buffer at pH 9.5, 2.5% (w/v) SDS as surfactant, 0.8% (w/v) ethyl acetate as oil phase, and 6.0% (w/v) 1-butanol as cosurfactant. The optimum extraction conditions of VSLLME were as follows: 100 μL chloroform was used as extraction solvent, 5.0 × 10⁻⁵ mol/L Tween-20 was chosen as the surfactant to enhance the emulsification, and the extraction process was carried out by vortex mixing for 3 min. Under these optimum experimental conditions, the calibration curve was linear in the range of 2.0-200.0 ng/mL, with the correlation coefficients (r²) varying from 0.9927 to 0.9958. The detection limits of the method varied from 0.41 to 0.62 ng/mL. The purposed method was applied to the determination of five triazine herbicides in real water samples, and the recoveries were between 80.6 and 107.3%.