Microwave-assisted digestion followed by parallel electromembrane extraction for trace level perchlorate detection in biological samples

A simple and parallel electromembrane extraction (pEME) method was developed and used to investigate trace perchlorate ion contamination in seafood. In this method, three different EME units were arranged simultaneously and connected parallel to a single DC power supply. In each unit, the ClO₄^- ions were electro-kinetically extracted from the microwave digested seafood homogenates into 100mM NaOH via a supported liquid membrane (1-Hexanol). Influential extraction parameters were carefully investigated. Under optimized conditions, good linearity with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.9949 over a concentration range of 1-125μg/g was obtained. The limit of detection (LOD) was 0.04μgg^-1. The methods intraday and inter day precision varied between 4.3-5.6% respectively. Mean recoveries were up to 107% (n=6, RSD=0.7-6.8%). This method was applied to different seafood samples to assess its feasibility for real applications and it exhibited an enhanced sample throughput compatible with both microwave and ion chromatography.