A new chiral residue analysis method for triazole fungicides in water using dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME).

A rapid, simple, reliable, and environment-friendly method for the residue analysis of the enantiomers of four chiral fungicides including hexaconazole, triadimefon, tebuconazole, and penconazole in water samples was developed by dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) pretreatment followed by chiral high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-DAD detection. The enantiomers were separated on a Chiralpak IC column by HPLC applying n-hexane or petroleum ether as mobile phase and ethanol or isopropanol as modifier. The influences of mobile phase composition and temperature on the resolution were investigated and most of the enantiomers could be completely separated in 20 min under optimized conditions. The thermodynamic parameters indicated that the separation was enthalpy-driven. The elution orders were detected by both circular dichroism detector (CD) and optical rotatory dispersion detector (ORD). Parameters affecting the DLLME performance for pretreatment of the chiral fungicides residue in water samples, such as the extraction and dispersive solvents and their volume, were studied and optimized. Under the optimum microextraction condition the enrichment factors were over 121 and the linearities were 30-1500 µg L(-1) with the correlation coefficients (R(2)) over 0.9988 and the recoveries were between 88.7% and 103.7% at the spiking levels of 0.5, 0.25, and 0.05 mg L(-1) (for each enantiomer) with relative standard deviations varying from 1.38% to 6.70% (n = 6) The limits of detection (LODs) ranged from 8.5 to 29.0 µg L(-1) (S/N = 3).