Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons extraction method comparison

Flotron, V., J. Houesson, A. Bosio, C. Delteil, A. Bermond, and V. Camel. 2003. Rapid determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sewage sludges using microwave-assisted solvent extraction. Comparison with other extraction methods. J. Chromatogr. A 999 175-184. 

The ability of several methods to extract polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other petroleum hydrocarbons from marine sediments was examined. Comparisons of soxh-let and methylene chloride reflux methods gave extraction efficiencies that showed no statistical difference in the return of PAHs however, the return when using ball-mill tumbling was significantly lower. The relative content of individual parent PAH compounds, parent compound distributions (PCDs), and alkyl homologue distributions (AHDs) of PAHs was calculated using capillary column GC-MS. The similarities of the distributions showed that any of the three methods could have been used to calculate these distributions. An examination of several extraction methods commonly used for the extraction of petroleum hydrocarbon material from sediment samples showed differences in results that depended on the extraction method employed. In addition, the methods varied in their ability to extract resolved versus unresolved material and to return aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon compounds. 

Codina, G., Vaquero, M. T., Cornelias, L., and Broto-Puig, F., Comparison of various extraction and clean-up methods for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sewage sludge-amended soils, J. Chromatogr. A, 673, 21-29, 1994. 

Ultrasonic LSE is most applicable to the isolation of semivolatile and nonvolatile organic compounds from solid matrices such as soil, sediment, clays, sand, coal tar, and other related solid wastes. U-LSE is also very useful for the disruption of biological material such as serum or tissue. U-LSE can be coupled with solid-phase extraction (SPE) to give a very robust sample preparation method at relatively low cost in comparison to MAE and ASE approaches. The author has utilized U-LSE/SPE to isolate and recover 9,10-dimethyl-l,2-benzanthracene from animal bedding. A 89% recovery was obtained for bedding that was spiked with this polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) of interest to toxicologists (20). An ultrasonic horn and tip are immersed into a mixture of liquid extractant and solid sample and sonicated at some percent of full power for a finite length of time, either continuously or pulsed. 

---