Sugarcane bagasse as low-cost solid-phase extraction sorbent for pesticides in water

Effective recycling of organic residues contributes to solving energy crisis and resource recycling. In Egypt, sugarcane is considered one of the most produced agricultural product, which in terms leads to the production of a vast amount of its by-products. In this work, for the first time, untreated sugarcane bagasse (SCB) was utilised as a sorbent in the solid-phase extraction (SPE) of selected pesticides including chlorfenvinphos, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, ethion, profenofos (organophosphorus compounds) and cyprodinil (anilinopyrimidine) from water. Optimal parameters influencing the recovery of the studied pesticides including eluting solvent (type, volume and pH), amount of sorbent and water pH were adjusted. Method performance criteria using SCB cartridges were compared with that of commercial SPE cartridges, indicating SCB as an effective and green chemistry alternative. The final SPE procedure can be briefly described as follows: the SCB (500 mg) SPE cartridge was conditioned with 5 mL methanol followed by 5 mL distilled water. Then, 500 mL water sample (DIW) was loaded on the SCB SPE cartridge. Afterwards, the cartridge was dried using nitrogen for 15 min. Then, 4 mL acetonitrile containing 5% formic acid was used as the eluting solvent to be analysed using LC-MS/MS. The method was validated in accordance with (SANTE/2020/12830 and Eurachem Second Edition 2014). Rapid adsorption and desorption performance for SCB was confirmed by using adsorption kinetic and isotherm studies. Finally, five environmental water samples were analysed using the developed method, only one sample had positive result (profenofos 0.01 µg/L), which is below the accepted limits.