EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ULTRASONIC AND SOXHLET EXTRACTIONS IN PREPARING SEDIMENT SAMPLES FOR DETERMINATION OF POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS (PAHs)

Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a family of polycyclic aromatic organic substances
composed of several benzene rings attached directly to each other. The present study evaluated the
extraction efficiency of ultrasonic and soxhlet extractions in preparing sediment samples for the
determination of PAHs by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). We found
that both ultrasonic extraction and soxhlet extraction techniques met the AOAC requirements
demonstrating repeatability and recovery efficiencies of surrogate standards >60% and analyte
recovery efficiencies >73% with 16 PAHs. The soxhlet extraction method indicated higher precision
than ultrasonic extraction. The statistical calculation results also indicate that at the research
concentration level, the average values of the two different sample treatment methods are not
statistically significant with a statistical reliability of 95% (P> 0.05).