Application of liquid-liquid microextraction for the effective separation and simultaneous determination of 11 pharmaceuticals in wastewater samples using high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry

A dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method for the simultaneous determination of 11 pharmaceuticals has been developed. The method is based on a microextraction procedure applied to wastewater samples from different regions of Hungary followed by high-performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry. The effect of the nature of the extractant, dispersive solvent, different additives, and extraction time were examined on the extraction efficiently of the dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method. Under optimal conditions, the linearity for determining the pharmaceuticals was in the range of 1-500 ng/mL, with the correlation coefficients ranging from 0.9922 to 0.9995. The limits of detection and limits of quantification were in the range of 0.31-6.65 and 0.93-22.18 ng/mL, respectively.