Determination of phthalate esters in soil by microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography coupled with accelerated solvent extraction.

A novel method using microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography combining accelerated solvent extraction was developed for quantitative analysis of six phthalate esters (PAEs) including dimethyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, benzyl butyl phthalate, bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, as well as dioctyl phthalate. The effect of each individual component within the microemulsions, i.e. oil phase, surfactant and co-surfactant on resolution of the analytes was systematically studied. Baseline separation of six PAEs was achieved within 26 min by using the microemulsion buffer containing a 60 mmol/L borate buffer at pH 9.0, 0.5% v/v n-octane as oil droplets, 100 mmol/L sodium cholate as surfactant and 5.0% v/v 1-butanol as co-surfactant. The purposed accelerated solvent extraction-microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography method was successfully applied to the determination of trace amount of PAEs in soil samples collected from three different fields in areas of Fujian Province and the contents of dimethyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, benzyl butyl phthalate, bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate and dioctyl phthalate were 0.63-0.68, 0.32-0.63, 2.53-3.96, 0-1.75, 7.32-11.7 and 0-3.46mg/kg, respectively. It was validated that the results were consistent with those obtained by GC-MS method.