A supramolecular solvent-based vortex-assisted direct microextraction of sulfonamides in sediment samples

A new supramolecular solvent (SUPRAS)-based vortex-assisted microextraction combined with high performance liquid chromatography was developed for simultaneous extraction and determination of sulfonamides (SAs) in lake sediment samples. A novel SUPRAS formation in aqueous solution containing heptafluorobutanol (HeFB) and citronellol (CTL) is proposed. Environmentally friendly and non-toxic CTL acted as amphiphile, and HeFB was the coacervation agent and density-regulating agent for the SUPRAS preparation. The main driving forces for the SUPRAS are hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions of HeFB with CTL. Parameters including the type and content of coacervation agent, content of CTL, volume of SUPRAS and vortex time were thoroughly investigated and optimized. The optimized conditions were evaluated by SUPRAS comprising 10 % HeFB and 4 % CTL. The volume of SUPRAS was 400 µL and the extraction time was 3 min. The prepared SUPRAS can effectively exclude some interferants and extract SAs from sediment samples with high extraction efficiency. Under the optimized conditions, low limits of detection (30–60 ng g−1) and limits of quantification (100–200 ng g−1), wide linear range (0.2–700 μg g-1, R2 ≥ 0.9974), high extraction recoveries (99.5–104.2 %) and good precision (relative standard deviations were 0.8 %-6.3 %) were obtained. Finally, the applicability of the developed method was evaluated by determining SAs in lake sediment samples. Sulfamethazine was detected at 1.59–1.77 μg g−1 for the three sediment samples. The novel HeFB-CTL SUPRAS can be applied to extract SAs from environmental sediment samples.