Enhancing trace acrylamide analysis by bromine derivatization coupled with direct-immersion solid-phase...

Area of Science:

• Environmental Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Acrylamide is a prevalent neurotoxic and genotoxic contaminant in drinking water due to polyacrylamide usage.
• Its high polarity and small size complicate extraction and analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and optimize a novel method for accurately determining trace acrylamide levels in drinking water.
• To overcome challenges associated with existing acrylamide analysis methods.

Main Methods:

• Bromine derivatization of acrylamide to 2-bromopropenamide.
• Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) with CAR/PDMS fiber for extraction.
• Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for analysis.

Main Results:

• The optimized method achieved a detection limit of 0.05 μg/L and linearity from 0.5 to 500 μg/L.
• High precision with relative standard deviations of 7.30% (repeatability) and 8.50% (reproducibility).
• Excellent spiking recovery (100%–106%) in tap water samples.

Conclusions:

• The novel bromine derivatization and DI-SPME GC-MS method offers superior precision and accuracy compared to previous SPME techniques for drinking water analysis.
• Successfully quantified acrylamide in clarification and filtration units (0.80 and 0.71 g/L).