Polyaniline‐co‐polyindole functionalized magnetic porous carbon derived from MIL‐53(Fe) for separation/enrichment of nitrophenols pollutants before determination with high‐performance liquid chromatography‐ultraviolet detection

Abstract

Herein, a novel polyaniline‐co‐polyindole functionalized magnetic porous carbon derived from MIL‐53(Fe) was prepared and employed as an excellent nano‐adsorbent to preconcentrate trace amounts of nitro‐phenols in water and wastewater samples. Briefly, magnetic MIL‐53(Fe) was synthesized by the addition of magnetite nanoparticles, terephthalic acid, and FeCl3 to the reaction medium. The magnetic MIL‐53(Fe) was pyrolyzed under nitrogen protection to obtain a magnetic porous carbon nanocomposite, and finally, the nanomaterial was functionalized with polyaniline‐co‐polyindole via oxidation polymerization. The obtained nano‐adsorbent was characterized via X‐ray diffraction, Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy, vibrating sample magnetometry, and transmission and scanning electron microscopies. After that, the fabricated nano‐material was utilized as an excellent nano‐adsorbent for the preconcentration of trace nitro‐phenols (2‐nitrophenol, 4‐nitrophenol, and 2,4‐dinitrophenol) in environmental water, and wastewater samples. The detection limits were obtained from 0.1 to 0.15 μg/L after performing the optimization process. The new method was in the range of 0.4–300 μg/L. The proposed method exhibited a good precision from 3.2% to 9.6% for within‐day assay, and 5.2%–13.2% for between‐day assay at three concentration levels (1, 50, and 250 μg/L). Eventually, this method was utilized to preconcentrate/determine the target analytes in three water, and wastewater samples, satisfactory (relative standard deviations, 5.4%–9.3%; relative recovery, 88%–109%).