Development and Evaluation of the Performance of the Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Sampler for Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate

Abstract

A polar organic chemical integrative sampler (POCIS) was developed for the detection of linear alkylbenzene sulfonates (LASs), which are one of the most widely used chemicals globally and represent a type of surfactant agent. In the present study, the LASs were significantly sorbed onto the polyethersulfonate (PES) membrane, suggesting that the less sorptive polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane is suitable for application in the POCIS device. Calibration experiments showed that the POCIS device with Oasis WAX as the sorbent and PTFE as the membrane filter had linear ranges > 28 d and sampling rates ranging from 0.035 ± 0.007 (tetradecylbenzenesulfonate) to 0.139 ± 0.024 (dodecylbenzenesulfonate) L d–1. Furthermore, this POCIS device was validated under non-steady-state conditions via both field and chamber tests. The time-weighted average concentrations of dodecylbenzenesulfonate measured using the POCIS agreed well with those obtained via grab sampling within 21% over the sampling period of 14 d in both the field and chamber tests. Therefore, the POCIS can be successfully applied in the detection of LASs in LAS-contaminated aquatic environments.

Keywords

• passive sampling
• surfactants
• monitoring