Iran Occupational Health

Background and aims: Conventional Methods for determination of volatile organic pollutants in the air are based on solvent extraction. Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) has been popular as an environmentally friendly technique to extract a very wide range of analytes. SPME fibers have some drawbacks that can be overcome by use of sol-gel nanosorbents. Therefore the aim of this study has been to evaluate a nano fiber for sampling and determination of carbon tetrachloride in air.

Methods: In this study, a novel multi-walled carbon nanotube fiber based on sol-gel technique was synthesized and the effects of several factors during sampling and determination of carbon tetrachloride were evaluated and finally compared with Carboxen/Polydimethylsiloxane (CAR/PDMS) as a commercial fiber.

Results: Results showed that the performances of proposed fiber under optimal conditions demonstrated better performances in lower level of both temperature and relative humidity. The efficient temperatures for thermal desorption were 280 °C. The desorption times were obtained at 3 min. The relative standard deviation (RSD) for repeatability ranged between 4 to 4.3 % for reproducibility ranged between 3.2 to 4.5 % .In comparative studies to CAR/PDMS, the results were acceptable.

Conclusion: Solid-phase microextraction with synthesized nano fiber is a simple, sensitive and applied method that can use successfully for determination of carbon tetrachloride in the air.