Determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in seawater by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection following micelle-mediated preconcentration.

In this work, the nonionic surfactant polyoxyethylene-10-lauryl ether has been used for the extraction and preconcentration of 14 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, classified as priority pollutants by the US Environmental Protection Agency, from seawater samples. The cloud-point preconcentration previous separation by HPLC and quantification using fluorimetric detection and wavelength programming allow to determine these pollutants with detection limits ranging from 1.0 to 1.5 x 10(2) ng/l with RSDs better than 10.4%. The methodology is evaluated using well-established extraction and preconcentration methods and GC-MS.