Chemometrics-assisted fluorimetry for the rapid and selective determination of heavy polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in contaminated river waters and activated sludges

Abstract

The most concerned polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) benzo[a]pyrene, dibenz[a,h]anthracene, chrysene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[k]fluoranthene and benz[a]anthracene were simultaneously determined in the presence of other 10 interfering PAHs, applying second-order multivariate calibration to the data obtained with a flow-through optosensor interfaced to a fast-scanning spectrofluorimeter. Using a sample volume of 2.5 mL, detection limits in the range 5-115 ng L-1 were obtained in interfering samples, with a sample frequency of ca. 15 samples per hour, and with a minimum use of organic solvents, competing very favorably with chromatographic methods. The significance of this study lies in the solution of the quantitative analysis problem of six PAHs in real matrices of unknown composition. The unfolded partial least-squares/residual bilinearization (U-PLS/RBL) algorithm showed the best performance in resolving the complex studied system.