Efficient extraction of aromatic amines in the air by the needle trap device packed with the zirconium based metal–organic framework sorbent

In this study, development of a needle trap device (NTD) packed with UiO-66 adsorbent was used for the sampling of the aromatic amine compounds (including aniline, N,N-dimethylaniline and o-toluidine) followed by gas chromatography (GC) with flame-ionization detector (FID) analysis. The UiO-66 sorbent was synthesized and then packed inside a spinal needle (Gauge 22). The synthesized sorbent was characterized with the XRD, FE-SEM, EDS and FT-IR techniques. This study was conducted both in the laboratory and in the real samples. In the laboratory, the sampling parameters (such as temperature and humidity) and desorption parameters (including desorption temperature and desorption time) were optimized using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) by Central Composite Design (CCD). The results indicated that the performance of the sampling device decreased with increasing the sampling humidity and temperature. Moreover, the highest peak area responses of the studied analytes were observed at a desorption time of 3 minutes and desorption temperature of 270 °C. The values of the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were in the range 0.01–0.02 and 0.03–0.05 ng mL(−1), respectively. Our findings demonstrated that NTD packed with synthesized UiO-66 has good repeatability (RSD = 1.3–6.8%) and acceptable reproducibility (with three NTDs) (RSD = 1.3–9.7%). Comparison of the results between NTD-UiO-66 and NIOSH2002 showed a sufficient correlation (0.98–0.99) between two methods. Therefore, the results indicated that the NTD packed with the UiO-66 adsorbent can be used as a powerful technique for occupational and environmental monitoring.