a b s t r a c t A new and fast hollow fiber based liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME) method using volatile organic solvents coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)was developed for determination of aromatic amines in the environmental water samples. Analytes including 3-nitroaniline, 3-chloroaniline and 4-bromoaniline were extracted from 6mL basic aqueous sample solution (donor phase, NaOH 1 mol L−1) into the thin film of organic solvent that surrounded and impregnated the pores of the polypropylene hollow fiber wall (toluene, 20L), then back-extracted into the 6L acidified aqueous solution (acceptor phase, HCl 0.5 mol L−1) in the lumen of the two-end sealed hollow fiber. After the extraction, 5L of the acceptor phase was withdrawn into the syringe and injected directly into the HPLC system for the analysis. The parameters influencing the extraction efficiency including the kind of organic solvent and its volume, composition of donor and acceptor phases and the volume ratio between them, extraction time, stirring rate, salt addition and the effect of the analyte complexation with 18-crown-6 ether were investigated and optimized. Under the optimal conditions (donor phase: 6mL of 1 mol L−1 NaOH with 10% NaCl; organic phase: 20L of toluene; acceptor phase: 6L of 0.5 mol L−1 HCl and 600mmol L−1 18-crown-6 ether; pre-extraction and back-extraction times: 75 s and 10 min, respectively;stirring rate: 800 rpm), the obtained EFs were between 259 and 674, dynamic linear ranges were 0.1–1000gL−1 (R > 0.9991), and also the limits of detectionwere in the range of 0.01–0.1gL−1. The proposed procedure worked very well for real environmental water samples with microgram per liter level of the analytes, and good relative recoveries (91–102%) were obtained for the spiked sample solutions. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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