Room-temperature excitation-emission phosphorescence matrices and second-order multivariate calibration for the simultaneous analysis of pyrene and benzo[a]pyrene

JUAN A. ARANCIBIA; GRACIELA M. ESCANDAR

ANALYTICA CHIMICA ACTA

Elsevier

Año: 2007 vol. 584 p. 287 - 294

0003-2670

The present article describes the simultaneous phosphorimetric determination of pyrene and benzo[a]pyrene, two highly toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, through excitation-emission phosphorescence matrices (EEPMs) and second-order calibration. The developed approach enabled us to determine both compounds at ug/L concentration levels without the necessity of applying separation steps, as well as significantly reducing the experimental time. An artificial neural network (ANN) approach was applied to optimize the chemical variables which have an influence on the room-temperature phosphorescence emission of the studied analytes. The present study was employed for the discussion of the scopes of the applied second-order chemometric tools: parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) and partial least-squares with residual bilinearization (PLS/RBL). The superior capability of PLS/RBL to model the profiles of other potentially interferent PAHs was demonstrated. The quality of the proposed method was established with the determination of both pyrene and benzo[a]pyrene in artificial and real water samples.