Fabricating a Novel Polymer Inclusion Membrane for Electromembrane Extraction: Application in Nicotine Extraction and Analysis from Various Vegetable Matrices

Abstract

While introducing a novel approach employing electromembrane extraction (EME) with a polymer inclusion membrane (PIM), this study demonstrates the extraction, preconcentration, and quantification of nicotine (NIC) in nightshade vegetables and summer crops. The PIM is a cost-effective alternative to advanced sample pretreatment techniques, functioning as a flat, organic liquid supported liquid membrane-free (SLM-free) membrane. The EME setup with this membrane is coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) for the extraction, cleanup, pre-concentration, and analysis of NIC from various vegetable matrices. The PIM was fabricated using 58.42% cellulose triacetate (CTA) as the base polymer, 3.24% APTES-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotube (FMWCNT) as the carrier, and 38.32% dioctyl phthalate (DOP) as the plasticizer. Under optimized conditions, the method exhibited a linear range of 10 to 100 and 100 to 20000 ng g-1, a limit of detection (LOD) of 3.0 ng g-1, and a limit of quantitation (LOQ) of 10 ng g-1. Repeatability and intermediate precision, assessed at three concentration levels, yielded a relative standard deviation of 5.2-7.6%, and 6.2-8.2% respectively, while extraction recovery reached 86%. Notably, the proposed method demonstrated excellent performance for determining NIC in eggplant, tomato, mushroom, and bell pepper samples, highlighting its reliability and reusability without significant loss in its performance. It also provides outstanding selectivity and efficient sample cleanup, making it highly suitable for NIC analysis in complex herbal matrices.

Keywords: Polymer Inclusion Membrane, Electromembrane Extraction, Nicotine Analysis, Nightshade Vegetables, HPLC-DAD