Surfactant Micellar Solutions as Alternative Solvents for Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons from a Spiked River Sediment

A procedure to extract polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from a contaminated river sediment is discussed; this combines short extraction times obtained by microwave energy with the peculiar solvent capability of aqueous micellar solutions. The technique, named microwave-assisted micellar extraction (MAME), was tested for the extraction of 11 PAHs from a spiked river sediment using polyoxyethylene (23) dodecyl ether (Brij 35), polyoxyethylene (10) dodecyl ether (C 12 E 10 ) or cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). Different temperatures and extraction times were explored to establish whether this method has merit. Comparative measurements were made using sonication and Soxhlet extraction with acetone-hexane. Generally, Soxhlet extraction was revealed to be the most effective method to extract the PAHs from the solid matrix, with percent of recovery ranging from 92% to 102%. Nevertheless, high recoveries were also achieved by MAME using C 12 E 10 ; in fact, with only the exception of indeno1,2,3- cd ]pyrene, the differences between recoveries obtained by MAME and Soxhlet extractions were below 10% for all the considered compounds.