Abstract
Ph.D.
A lot of chemicals are used in agriculture to increase production per cost. Unfortunately most of these chemicals find their way into the final agricultural product or get washed off into other systems where they may pose health and environmental concerns. As such monitoring of these compounds where they are not needed is necessary to avoid unwarranted pollution and the effects associated with them. This requires the use of analytical techniques and instrumentation.
Analytical chemistry, especially in the area of sample preparation and clean-up, has shifted focus mainly on greener methods that produce only minute quantities of waste without sacrificing efficiency. This has led to the conception of a term QuEChERS (acronym for Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Robust and Safe) to reflect this trend in sample preparation. Efforts have been made in this regard to reduce the amount of chemicals used; as a result miniaturised techniques have evolved. One such technique that is easiest and cheapest is solvent micro-extraction especially the single-drop format, wherein only a few micro-litres of an organic solvent are used to sample the aqueous solution with the same volume being transferred into the instrument for analysis.
This study reports the advances made in development of a modified single-drop micro-extraction (SDME) technique through the deliberate introduction of an air-bubble to facilitate mass transfer. This is termed bubble-in-drop single-drop micro-extraction (BID-SDME). The method has been reported for the first time in our earlier work. This study started off with the validation of the method using triazine mixture (TP 619) as model herbicides. The method was validated for linearity (0.05 – 5 ng/mL), reproducibility and repeatability (%RSD < 10%), matrix effect, limits of detection (pg/mL range) and quantification as well as accuracy.