CHAPTER 12: Pretreatment Processes for the Analysis of Organic Pollutants with Nanomaterials

It is necessary to monitor organic pollutants in environmental samples because many of these compounds can pose threats to human health and the ecosystem. Despite advances in analytical instruments, the direct analysis of organic contaminants is not always possible owing to the low concentrations of the analytes and matrix interferences. Therefore, one or more pretreatment steps are necessary with the goal of enrichment, clean-up and signal enhancement. On the other hand, sample preparation still consumes the most time and labour in the analytical procedure, so attempts are being made to improve this step in terms of speed, reliability and sensitivity. In recent years, separation technology based on nanomaterials has received considerable attention. The incorporation of nanoparticles in the sample treatment step, in general, helps to simplify this step. This chapter aims to study the different applications of nanomaterials in the sample preparation procedures of organic pollutants, which allows simplification of the method and the possibility of treating small amounts of sample.