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Dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and HPLC to analyse fluoxetine and metoprolol enantiomers in wastewaters

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Abstract

Sample extraction is a major step in environmental analyses due both to the high complexity of matrices and to the low concentration of the target analytes. Sample extraction is usually expensive, laborious, time-consuming and requires a high amount of organic solvents. Actually, there is a lack of miniaturized methodologies for sample extraction and chiral analyses. Here, we developed a dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) to extract the pharmaceuticals fluoxetine and metoprolol, as models of basic chiral compounds, from wastewater samples. Compounds were then analysed by enantioselective high-performance liquid chromatography. We monitored the influence of sample pH, extracting and dispersive solvent and respective volumes, salt addition, extracting and vortexing time. The DLLME method was validated within the range of 1–10 µg L−1 for fluoxetine enantiomers and 0.5–10 µg L−1 for metoprolol enantiomers. Accuracy ranged from 90.6 to 106 % and recovery rates from 54.5 to 81.5 %. Relative standard deviation values lower than 7.84 and 9.00 % were obtained for intra- and inter-batch precision, respectively.

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Acknowledgments

The work has been supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia—FCT (PhD. grant attributed to ARR and ASM respectively, SFRH/BD/64999/2009 and SFRH/BD/86939/2012), from QREN-POPH, European Social Fund and MCTES. Authors also wish to acknowledge the support from national funds from FCT through projects FLUOROPHARMA, (PTDC/EBB-EBI/111699/2009), PEst-OE/EQB/LA0016/2013 and CEQUIMED-PEst-OE/SAU/UI4040/2014, as well as the support from CESPU through project PHARMADRUGS-CESPU-2014.

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Author notes

  1. Ana R. Ribeiro

    Present address: LCM – Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials – Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CESPU, Instituto de Investigação e Formação Avançada em Ciências e Tecnologias da Saúde, Rua Central de Gandra, 1317, 4585-116, Gandra, PRD, Portugal

    Ana R. Ribeiro, Virgínia M. F. Gonçalves, Alexandra S. Maia, Cláudia Ribeiro & Maria E. Tiritan

  2. CBQF - Centro de Biotecnologia e Química Fina – Laboratório Associado, Escola Superior de Biotecnologia, Universidade Católica Portuguesa/Porto, Rua Arquiteto Lobão Vital, Apartado 2511, EC Asprela, 4202-401, Porto, Portugal

    Ana R. Ribeiro, Alexandra S. Maia & Paula M. L. Castro

  3. Centro de Química Medicinal da Universidade do Porto (CEQUIMED-UP), Laboratório de Química Orgânica e Farmacêutica, Departamento de Ciências Químicas, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade do Porto, Rua de Jorge Viterbo Ferreira, 228, 4050-313, Porto, Portugal

    Ana R. Ribeiro & Maria E. Tiritan

  4. Centro Interdisciplinar de Investigação Marinha e Ambiental (CIIMAR/CIMAR), Universidade do Porto, Rua dos Bragas 289, 4050-123, Porto, Portugal

    Maria E. Tiritan

Authors
  1. Ana R. Ribeiro
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  2. Virgínia M. F. Gonçalves
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  4. Cláudia Ribeiro
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  6. Maria E. Tiritan
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Correspondence to Maria E. Tiritan.

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Ribeiro, A.R., Gonçalves, V.M.F., Maia, A.S. et al. Dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and HPLC to analyse fluoxetine and metoprolol enantiomers in wastewaters. Environ Chem Lett 13, 203–210 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-015-0498-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-015-0498-2

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