Excitation-emission fluorescence-kinetic data obtained by Fenton degradation. Determination of heavy-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by four-way parallel factor analysis

MAIRA D. CARABAJAL, JUAN A. ARANCIBIA, GRACIELA M. ESCANDAR⁎

TALANTA

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2017 vol. 165 p. 52 - 63

0039-9140

For the first time, a simple and environmentally friendly third-order/four-way calibration was applied for thesimultaneous determination of five heavy-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in interfering environments.The kinetic evolution of the Fenton degradation of benzo[a]pyrene, dibenz[a,h]anthracene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[k]fluoranthene and benz[a]anthracene was followed by recording full excitation-emissionfluorescence matrices (EEFMs) of the samples at different reaction times, obtaining third-order EEFM-kinetic(EEFM-K) data. The sensitivity of the method was increased by carrying out the reaction in the presence ofmethyl-β-cyclodextrin. The four-way parallel factor (PARAFAC) algorithm, which was used for data processing,exploits the second-order advantage, allowing analyte concentrations to be estimated even in the presence of anuncalibrated fluorescent background. The clear superiority of the applied approach in comparison with secondorder/three-waycalibration performed with unreacting EEFMs is demonstrated, using two sets of samples withforeign compounds with particular spectral profiles. In one of the latter sets, the existence of a third-orderadvantage was explored and discussed. The feasibility to directly determine parts-per-trillion concentrationlevels of PAHs after a very simple solid-phase extraction with C18 membranes is established with natural watersamples containing uncalibrated constituents.