Polybutylene succinate/modified cellulose bionanocomposites as sorbent for needle trap microextraction

In this work, different polybutylene succinate/modified cellulose bio-nanocomposites were synthesized by solving the casting method and then used as a new sorbent for needle trap microextraction of some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from the water samples in headspace mode. The surface of cellulose nanocrystalline was modified using aminosilane groups to improve the dispersion of nanoparticles in the polybutylene succinate matrix. The characterization of synthesized nanocomposites, were performed using TGA, SEM, BET analysis and FT-IR spectroscopy. Adding modified nanocrystalline cellulose to a polybutylene succinate matrix increased the surface area, and thermal and mechanical stabilities. The significant parameters of the sorbent extraction process, including the amount of modified cellulose nanoparticles, the extraction time, and temperatures and salt content, were studied and optimized. Under the optimized extraction conditions (extraction time of 25 min, and extraction temperature of 50 °C), an analytical method for selected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with low detection limits (0.75-1 ng L^-1) and the quantification limit (3-5 ng L^-1), good repeatability (3-7% at 20 ng L^-1), and reproducibility (9%-14%, n = 3) was developed. The linearity of the method was obtained in the range of 5-1000 ng L^-1 with R² > 0.9996. The enrichment factor was obtained for the spiked real aqueous samples (at 50 ng L^-1) in the range of 276-311. Also, the performance of the developed method was studied via the extraction of selected analytes in real water samples, and the relative recovery values were found to be in the range of 98-103%.