Electrically enhanced liquid-phase microextraction of three textile azo dyes from wastewater and plant samples

An electromembrane extraction procedure coupled with HPLC and visible detection was applied for the extraction of three textile azo dyes as organic salts. The extraction parameters such as extraction time, applied voltage, pH range, and concentration of salt added were optimized. A driving force of 60 V was applied to extract the analytes through 2-nitrophenyl octyl ether, used as the supported liquid membrane, into a neutral aqueous solution. This method required 20 min extraction time from a neutral sample solution. The proposed microextraction technique provided good linearity with correlation coefficients from 0.996 to 0.998 over a concentration range of 1.0-1000.0 ng/mL. The LODs of dyes were 0.30-0.75 ng/mL, while the reproducibility ranged from 6.7 to 12.9% (n = 6). Also, enrichment factors of 96-162 that corresponded to the recoveries ranging from 48 to 81% were achieved. Finally, the application of this new method was demonstrated on wastewater samples and some plants grown in contaminated environments. Excellent selectivity was obtained as no interfering peaks were detected.