A Novel, Green, β‐Cyclodextrin‐Based Microextraction and Enrichment Method for Sensitive HPLC‐UV Determination of 4‐Nitrophenol in Groundwater

Abstract

With spectroscopic and analytical precomparison studies of α, β, and γ-cyclodextrins, a β-cyclodextrin (CD) based micro-extraction and enrichment method for highly sensitive (up to pg/mL) HPLC-UV determination of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) in ground water has been reported. Highly efficient sample pretreatment was achieved with a novel, green, and self-tailored hybrid of MEPS (micro extraction by packed sorbent extraction) and d-SPE (dispersive solid phase extraction) in β-cyclodextrin packed gel loading pipette tip named, pipette tip packed sorbent dispersive micro solid phase extraction (PPS-d-µSPE). The method was successfully applied to real ground water samples from Ludhiana, Punjab, India. Under optimized conditions, an excellent linearity of 0.9991 (R2) was obtained over a concentration range of 0.01–5 ng/mL, with high recoveries (96%–98.87%), and an excellent LOD value of 0.002 ng/mL. This paper reports an approach of applying spectroscopic aid to analytical method development, and a novel, innovative, hybrid enrichment analytical podium for HPLC-UV determination of 4-NP in real ground water samples with high analytical performance, rapidness, practicality, and environmental friendliness.