Novel polyvinyl alcohol/gum tragacanth molecularly imprinted-electrospun nanofibers as adsorbent for selective solid phase extraction of bisphenol A.

A polyvinyl alcohol/gum tragacanth molecularly imprinted nanofiber fabricated by electrospinning (PVA/GT-MIN) was used as an efficient adsorbent for the solid phase extraction (SPE) of bisphenol A (BPA) in water samples. PVA and GT were functional polymers and BPA was the template for molecular imprinting. BPA was bound to the polymer matrix through hydrogen bonding. The SEM image of PVA/GT-MIN demonstrated a rough morphology with pores and a diameter of 501 nm. The data for the adsorption of BPA on PVA/GT-MIN fitted the Freundlich isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetics models. The proposed SPE using PVA/GT-MIN coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection presented good linearity from 50 μg/L-5 mg/L (R = 0.9999) and yielded a limit of detection of 21 μg/L. The PVA/GT-MIN was applied to extract bottled water for BPA analysis and recoveries were 93.1-97.7 % (RSDs ≤ 3.6 %). This study presents a novel, easily prepared PVA/GT-MIN adsorbent for the extraction of BPA in water.