ABSTRACT Despite their industrial value, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs; representative components of coal tar) also pose significant environmental risks. Therefore, the accurate quantification of these PAHs is crucial for both assessing their environmental risks and realizing the efficient industrial utilization of coal tar. Given the complex matrix of coal tar, the efficiency of sample pretreatment directly determines quantitative accuracy and is a key bottleneck for precise PAHs determination, making the development of integrated pretreatment‐detection technology crucial. To address the challenge of quantitative determination of PAHs caused by the complex matrix of coal tar, we developed an accurate, sensitive, and robust method based on solid‐phase extraction (SPE), coupled with high‐performance liquid chromatography–ultraviolet/fluorescence detection (HPLC–UV/FLD), establishing a standardized analytical approach for accurately quantifying 17 PAHs across wide concentration range in coal tar. The method was systematically validated in terms of reagent consumption, processing efficiency, and methodological indicators. Critically, the matrix effect was verified to be negligible by spiking standards into the cleaned actual sample matrix, significantly simplified the analytical procedure. The method demonstrated excellent linearity ( R 2 > 0.9990) across the concentration range of 2–2500 µg L −1 . The spike recovery rates ranged from 80.8% to 99.6%, with a relative standard deviation below 10%. The method was successfully applied to simultaneously determine 17 PAHs in five coal tar samples. The results revealed the predominance of 2–4 ring PAHs and significant variations in the concentrations of individual PAHs.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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