Air-Assisted Liquid Liquid-Microextraction for the Analysis of Fungicides from Environmental Water and Juice Samples

In this work, a rapid method based on air-assisted liquid liquid microextraction (AALLME) was developed for the determination of three fungicides (azoxystrobin, diethofencarb and pyrimethanil) in water and juice samples. A narrow-neck glass tube was made to facilitate collection of the low-density extractant. The mixture of extractant and sample solution is rapidly sucked into a 5-mL glass syringe and then is injected into the narrow-neck glass tube and the procedure is repeated six times. A homogeneous solution was formed and then with the continuous injection of air by a 20-mL glass syringe, phase separation happened and the extractant was collected on the top of the sample solution. No centrifugation separation step was involved. It took only 90 s to complete the pretreatment process. The influence of main factors on the extraction efficiency is studied. Under optimal conditions, enrichment factors for the three fungicides varied from 145 to 178. The limits of detection for azoxystrobin, diethofencarb and pyrimethanil were 0.08, 0.16 and 0.25 µg L(-1), respectively. Reasonable relative recoveries were varied from 72.3 to 108.0%. And satisfactory intra-assay (5.3-6.2%, n = 6) and inter-assay (6.8-9.3%, n = 6) precision illustrated good performance of the analytical procedure.