Homogeneous liquid–liquid microextraction via flotation assistance for rapid and efficient determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in water samples

[Display omitted] ► Homogeneous liquid–liquid microextraction via flotation assistance was developed based on applying low density organic solvents. ► In this research, a special extraction cell was designed to facilitate collection of the low-density solvent extraction. ► In this work, air flotation was used to break up the organic-in water emulsion and to finish the extraction process. In this work, a rapid, simple and efficient homogeneous liquid–liquid microextraction via flotation assistance (HLLME-FA) method was developed based on applying low density organic solvents without no centrifugation. For the first time, a special extraction cell was designed to facilitate collection of the low-density solvent extraction in the determination of four polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in water samples followed by gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The effect of different variables on the extraction efficiency was studied simultaneously using experimental design. The variables of interest in the HLLME-FA were selected as extraction and homogeneous solvent volumes, ionic strength and extraction time. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to investigate the optimum conditions of all the variables. Using optimized variables in the extraction process, for all target PAHs, the detection limits, the precisions and the linearity of the method were found in the range of 14–41μgL−1, 3.7–10.3% (RSD, n=3) and 50–1000μgL−1, respectively. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the analysis of four target PAHs in the water samples, and satisfactory results were obtained.